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Apostolic Succession and 


the Problem of Unity 


By the Reverend 


Edward McCrady 


Rector of Grace Church, 
Canton, Mississippi 


The University Press of 


Sewanee Tennessee 1905 


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Copyrighted 1905 
By mah i 
EDWARD McCRADY 


The Lambeth Articles 


I 


The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testa- 
ments, as ‘‘containing all things necessary to salva- 
tion,” and as being the ultimate rule and standard 
of faith. 


II 


The Apostles’ Creed as the baptismal symbol; and 
the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the 
Christian Faith. 


Ill 


The two sacraments ordained by Christ Himself — 
Baptism and the Supper of the Lord—ministered 
with unfailing use of Christ’s words of Institution, and 
of the elements ordained by Him. 


IV 


The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the 
methods of its administration, to the varying needs 
of the nations and peoples called by God into the 
Unity of His Church. 


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Contents 


THE PROBLEM STATED 


II 


MEMBERSHIP IN THE CHURCH CATHOLIC 


III 


THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND ON THE SUCCESSION 


(A) ARTICLES AND FORMULARIES 
(B) ACTS OF PARLIAMENT 


(Cc) TESTIMONY OF ACCREDITED WRITERS 


IV 


THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH ON THE SUCCESSION 


(A) ARTICLES AND FORMULARIES 


(B) TESTIMONY OF ACCREDITED WRITERS 


V 


CONCLUSION 


Introduction 


IN writing an introduction to this book I do not 
intend to convey the impression that I have, in 
any way, contributed to its contents. The book is 
the author’s work, and his alone. While I do not 
agree with all that is written, I think it well and 
strongly written, and that it ought to find place 
in the discussion of the subject of the unity of 
Christendom. Where the issues are so great, so 
profoundly important, no region ought to be left 
unexplored, no question (no matter how old or how 
often investigated) should be left undiscussed .in 
its new bearings, no amount of patient, charitable 
investigation ought to be regarded as onerous; but 
the discussion should be utterly free, completely 
full and without passion. No subject connected 
with it should be held so sacred that it may not 
reverently and respectfully be tested. In this spirit 
of respectful investigation the author has entered 
into the discussion, sometimes with questions which 
he seeks to answer, sometimes with declarations 
which he considers that the Church’s teaching war- 
rants. The real merit of both questions and dec- 
larations can best be tested in the open court of the 
Church’s sifting and searching processes which inev- 
itably tend to the illumination of the truth. Into this 
open court the book enters, its author anx ous to con- 


Introduction 


tribute to the unity of God’s people, and that what is 
of error in his work should be exposed. 

His intention is not to undermine the existing or- 
der or organization of the Church, but to make a seri- 
ous and earnest examination into what that order and 
organization are and what they rest upon. If the ar- 
gument seems to antagonize the theories and doctrines 
of present-day writers, may it not be that these writers 
have themselves misconceived the Church, and with 
honest but mistaken intent misstated her position? 
The author’s effort is not to assert or to establish a 
theory of his own making, but to discover the Church’s 
practical doctrine, and then present it in its significant 
bearing upon the great question of Unity, which he 
rightly regards as the foremost ecclesiastical question 
of the day. That the Historic Episcopate is a prac- 
tical necessity to stability in Church government has 
become his firm belief, which has grown out of his 
patient study of the history of the past. When the 
Roman Church replaced the Historic Episcopate with 
Papal sovereignty and sought to fix this strange doc- 
trine upon the Catholic Church, disintegration re- 
sulted; and when the Protestant Churches discarded 
the Episcopate, segregation and confusion resulted as 
a natural consequence. The author believes that the 
Historic Episcopate is worthy, and is destined to be- 
come a basis of unity, not because it is a doctrine of 
necessity, but because it has proved its practical ne- 
cessity to stable government. 

Those who disagree with his conclusions will be 


Introduction 


stimulated by his arguments. Those who agree with 
them will be fortified, and their belief in unity, and 
their hope for unity, rekindled. 

For myself, I must decline to be construed as be- 
longing toany party inthe Church. Party shiboleths 
have a tendency to narrow one’s conceptions of the 
Church, to fix one’s conception of that which is a liv- 
ing organism, to limit and sometimes prevent, and 
sometimes even predetermine, one’s search for the 
truth. 

THEODORE D. BRATTON 


Apostolic Succession and the 
Problem of Unity 


Apostolic Succession and the 


Problem of Unity 


I 
THE PROBLEM STATED 


TuereE can be little doubt that the matter of Church 
Unity is one of the most important of the many sub- 
jects under consideration of the Christian world. Not 
only are men of all denominations beginning to feel 
that the various controversies and disputes of chris- 
tendom have been waged, for the most part, over mat- 
ters which have been of far from vital importance to 
the cause of truth, but they are further beginning to 
realize that the maintenance of such divisions, except 
for reasons of inevitable necessity, where principles 
deemed absolutely essential to spiritual gowth and 
welfare are at stake, must be regarded as sinful and in- 
excusable. In short, they are beginning to realize 
that Unity is not merely a pleasing ideal, which is 
beautiful to contemplate and would for many reasons 
be a great boon to humanity, were it possible to be 
had, but they are further beginning to appreciate that 
it is an end for which each individual man, as well as 
each individual denomination is in duty bound to pray 
and hope and labor—that schism is absolutely inex- 
cusable in the sight of God except for the most vital 


2 


Apostolic Succession’ 


principles of Christian faith, and that the paramount 
question with the members of each individual denom- 
ination should be, not are we right or wrong with re- 
spect to our contention as to the truth of Christ’s 
teaching on this or that disputed point, but that even 
if right, does the correctness of our position justify 
us in our continued separation from our brethren in 
the great Body of Christ. 

It is a demonstrable fact, and one that should be 
self-evident to every thoughtful man, that an entire 
unity of opinion upon all matters of faith is an abso- 
lute impossibility, so long as men are mentally, moral- 
ly and physically constituted as they are. There are 
no two men in the world who can absolutely agree in 
their understanding or intellectual appreciation of any 
problem, however earnest each may be to ascertain the 
truth and nothing but the truth. Each is compelled 
by nature and education to view the same problem in 
a somewhat different light, and no matter how desir- 
ous each may be to agree with the other, they cannot 
declare their unanimity in every particular without 
being guilty of intellectual dishonesty. In short, the 
price of absolute intellectual unity upon all theological 
or other questions is moral turpitude and insincerity; 
the price of absolute mental conformity to a fixed 
formula of belief on all disputed matters of Christian 
Faith is infidelity to the voice of conscience, infidelity 
to the sense of right and duty, infidelity to The Spir- 
it of Truth—The Holy Spirit— The Holy Ghost. 
Christ does not, therefore, expect that of us. He 


2 


The Problem of Unity 


does not ask absolute unity of opinion upon all theo- 
logical questions, but what He does ask is unity of 
life and will and purpose in The Spirit, and through 
unity in The Spirit gradually to come more and more 
into a unity of mind and opinion. The latter, how- 
ever, is an end, not a present state or condition either 
actual or possible, and an end, moreover, which will 
be attained and can be attained only through what is 
now and always an ever present possibility, viz.,— 
unity in The Spirit of Christ. Absolute agreement 
in all doctrinal matters, therefore, should not be ex- 
pected in any proposed platform of organic unity. It 
will be a supreme blessing to know that we can be one 
on those matters generally regarded as vital, and as 
there is good reason to believe that such a consumma- 
tion is not so irrevocably beyond the hope of realiza- 
tion (at least as regards the greater part of Christen- 
dom) as some would suppose, it certainly behooves 
the members of all denominations to look at the mat- 
ter attentively, and see if there be not among the many 
doctrinal tenets of the various churches, some com- 
mon ground in things essential. 

It will, of course, be a difficult task, in view of the 
many and conflicting opinions held on all sides, and 
the natural denominational prejudices with which each 
tenet is encumbered, rightly to distinguish between 
what are essential and what are unessential matters, 
and for this we can only trust to the guidance of that 
one, supreme Spirit, in Whom happily we are already 
professedly one, and Whose still, small voice if duly 


3 


Apostolic Succession 


heeded, cannot but point the way to a final solution of 
all these and other merely intellectual difficulties, be- 
ing, as He is, The Spirit of Truth Itself. 

It is a foregone conclusion, therefore, that we must 
under any circumtsances expect to differ more or less 
widely upon many important points, but unless any of 
the points in question should be more than merely im- 
portant — unless they should be esteemed by any of 
us to be vital to spiritual health and moral principle 
—they should in no case be allowed to justify the 
continuance of schism, as, excepting these, we should 
ever regard Unity as above all other considerations 
the supreme end and purpose of all outward and visible 
Christianity. It is manifest, then, that we must be 
willing to agree to disagree on all matters short of what 
conscience declares to be essential to individual spirit- 
ual safety, and that in examining the problem our 
first and highest endeavor should always be to discov- 
er what is false or erroneous in our own creed, rather 
than what is false or erroneous in the creed of others. 
The latter is always an easy task. It is the former 
that is so difficult of accomplishment, and that 
is the real obstacle—or at least the most serious 
obstacle—that ever stands in the way of ultimate 
Unity. 

Now asa member of this branch of the Catholic 
Church, it is our purpose in the following pages to ex- 
amine our own position carefully, and to inquire, in 
absolute disregard of what has been done by other 
churches, whether we ourselves have done everything 


4 


The Problem of Unity 


possible on our part to bring about the end desired. 
If we have so done, then we may feel assured that 
further responsibility rests with others; but if not, no 
stone should be left unturned in our endeavor to sacri- 
fice all worldly or denominational interests for the one 
supreme ideal. 

The exposure of denominational error, pride and 
prejudice, painful as indeed it is, cannot be shirked 
when the integrity of the Church Catholic is at stake, 
and once we have the courage nobly to admit our weak- 
nesses, and manfully to right the wrong (regardless of 
the sins of others) the spectacle of such Christ-like 
heroism will rouse the Christian world, as nothing 
else will ever rouse it, to the sense of its duty 
and responsibility in the matter. Now we fully 
realize that this church, in connection with the 
mother church of England, has. already taken a most 
commendable step towards the attainment of this 
end. 

In the Lambeth Articles a proposed basis of union 
has been set forth which, were it rightly understood, 
would, we believe, be willingly entered into by at least 
a large number of Christian people. Unfortunately 
however, in spite of the broad and liberal wording of 
this platform, the end for which it was intended has 
had to suffer because of the interpretation which 
many of our churchmen both in public and in private, 
in the pulpit and in the press, have persisted in 
placing upon one of its clauses, and the general 
attitude assumed by them regarding many doctrinal 


5 


Apostolic Succession 
questions more or less directly associated there- 
with. 

To be brief, the broad phrase —‘‘the Historic Epis- 
copate’’— contained in the 4th Article of the Plat- 
form, and which appears to be the only clause that has 
met with serious objection, has been arbitrarily as- 
sumed to carry with it the so-called doctrine of Apos- 
tolic Succession as though the latter were a necessary 
corollary, and this interpretation of its meaning, to- 
gether with a number of conclusions naturally conse- 
quent therefrom respecting the nature and extent of 
the Church Catholic have been so widely diffused 
among all classes of churchmen that the result has 
been that the true, official teachings of this church on 
all such matters have been obscured, and what might 
have been hoped for from the broad and catholic word- 
ing of the Lambeth Articles has necessarily been 
lost. 

We propose in the following pages to discuss in de- 
tail some of these hindrances to Unity, and to show 
that the various principles underlying them have no 
justification either in reason or in the official teachings 
of this church. We shall begin by considering the 
matter of membership in the Church Catholic — par- 
ticularly as that subject has been presented in the re- 
cent agitation to change the name of this church; and 
following this, we shall discuss at some length the real 
attitude of this church, assumed at the very begin- 
ning of her history and never surrendered at any time, 
upon the subject of the Apostolic Succession, in con- 


6 


The Problem of Unity 


tra-distinction to the views generally entertained to- 
day — both of which matters, intimately connected as 
they are, have in their popular representation, greatly 
militated against all proposals on the part of this 
church looking to the possible re-union of Christen- 
dom. 


II 
MEMBERSHIP IN THE CHURCH CATHOLIC 


WHILE the discussion regarding a change in the 
present title of the Church has now somewhat abated, 
because of the adverse report of the committee recent- 
ly appointed by the General Convention to ascertain 
the mind of the people at large, yet because of the 
qualified character of the objections urged by many of 
the Diocesan Councils,.and the evident popularity 
of the movement in many quarters—a popularity, 
moreover, which continues to increase rather than to 
diminish — it is impossible for any one to look upon 
the matter as definitely and finally settled. In fact, 
the advocates of the movement are far from discour- 
aged. It is pointed out that if such a proposition had 
even been broached in the Convention a few years 
back, it would have been treated with scant courtesy, 
whereas so great a change in the sentiment of church- 
men has come about within the past decade, that at 
the last meeting of the same body, the subject was not 
only allowed a hearing, but was deemed of sufficient 
importance to be brought to the attention of the vari- 
ous Dioceses and their opinions solicited. That the 
result of the investigation has been unfavorable to im- 
mediate action, is not surprising. It was not to be 
expected that so momentous a question should be de- 
cided in a day, and even if possible, the most sanguine 
would hardly have deemed it advisable. As it is, they 


8 


The Problem of Unity 


contend, much has been accomplished in the right di- 
rection. Thevery action of the Convention has made 
the question a matter of discussion throughout the en- 
tire Church, and the report of the committee has at 
least revealed the fact that the percentage of church- 
men in favor of a change in the near future, is far 
greater than the majority. of people were inclined 
to suspect. In view of all the circumstances, there- 
fore, it appears to be true that the question is one 
which is, indeed, far from being disposed of by the 
committee’s report, and will inevitably present itself 
again, and that at no distant day, for final solution. 
With this conviction in mind, and with the further 
belief that if such an end be attained along the partic- 
ular lines upon which it is now being advocated it will 
prove disastrous to the welfare of this Church, and the 
hope of Christian Unity through her endeavors, it be- 
comes necessary for us to speak at some length of the 
matter. 

It is not the question of a change of name, in and 
by itself, that we regard as necessarily dangerous to 
the cause of Unity, but change, as we have said, along 
the particular lines upon which it is being advocated 
to-day. Inshort, we have no desire to insist upon the 
adequacy of the present title. The designation ‘‘Pro- 
testant Episcopal Church’’ may fail, perhaps, to some 
extent, in clearly defining our real position to the 
world, and it may very possibly be true that some 
other title would be more appropriate and desirable. 
But however this may be, adequate or inadequate, we 


y 


Apostolic Succession 


believe that the present name comes far nearer ex- 
pressing the real truth of our position, and is more 
comprehensible to the world at large, than any that 
has yet been suggested — particularly more appropri- 
ate and satisfactory than the title “The American 
Catholic Church’’— the designation that appeared to 
be the one most seriously contemplated by the late ad- 
vocates of the change and which is to-day the title 
most commonly in mind whenever the subject is dis- 
cussed. Not only do we believe that the adoption of 
such a title would prove a serious barrier to Unity, 
but we further believe that it would tend to place the 
Church in a most embarrassing position before the 
world because of its absolute indefensibility when ex- 
amined in the light of her official utterances in the 
past. Let us look into the matter carefully and see if 
we are not fully justified in this opinion. 

It will be evident from the perusal of a little work 
entitled ‘‘A Handbook of Information,’’ published 
some time ago by The Young Churchman Co., of 
Milwaukee, in which arguments for the correction of 
the present title are advanced, that one point in favor 
of the proposed name ‘‘ American Catholic Church” 
is that it suggests ‘“‘historic identity with the Church 
of the ages.’’ This, of course, refers to the word 
“‘Catholic,’’ as there is no such significance in the 
word ‘‘American.’’ By ‘‘Catholic’’ then, is signified 
‘‘Historic identity with the Church of the ages,”’ and 
by the prefix ‘‘American’’ such historic identity is 
further ‘‘localized’’ so ‘‘as.to imply this particular 


: 10 


The Problem of Unity 


body in the United States and none other.’’ The 
meaning of this is, of course, not difficult to discern, 
and the remainder of the article only confirms and 
illustrates it the more. To put it in plain terms, the 
entire argument for the adoption of this title rests up- 
on the following assumptions. 

Our Lord established in this world but one Church. 
This Church was known at the beginning as the Cath- 
olic Church. Inthe course of ages, because of inter- 
nal disputes and dissensions, this holy, catholic and 
apostolic Church became divided. Each division, 
however, continued to preserve its corporate connec- 
tion with the original Catholic Church, and hence con- 
tinued to be a corporate branch of this Catholic 
Church. At the time of the Reformation, and sub- 
sequently, however, a large number of dissatisfied 
members left their respective branches and separat- 
ed themselves from all further organic or corporate 
connection with the Catholic Church — organizing 
themselves into various bodies and societies patterned 
after their own ideas, but continuing to call them- 
selves churches. In view of these palpable facts of 
history, it is evident that to retain the word ‘‘Protest- 
ant’’ in our official title is grievously to mis-state our 
position to the world, for the Protestant bodies are 
those which have separated themselves from all organ- 
ic connection with the Church Catholic, whereas it is 
a matter of peculiar pride with us, that we have never 
severed such connection. If, therefore, the remaining 
legitimate branches of the Catholic Church continue 


II 


Apostolic Succession 


to uphold their Catholic lineage in their official titles, 
we should do the same. Weare not a Protestant sect, 
but a Catholic branch, and if that Catholic branch 
that originated in Rome, be the Roman Catholic; that 
- in the East, generally designated as Greek, be the 
Greek Catholic; that originating in England, the 
Anglican or Anglo-Catholic, why should we, the only 
legitimate branch originating in America, fear to as- 
sume our lawful title, the American Catholic? 

Now we freely grant that with such assumptions 
before us, it is impossible logically to evade this re- 
sult. The premises once accepted, the conclusion is 
irresistible. But is it necessary to accept the prem- 
ises? In answer to this we unhesitatingly assert that 
not only is it unnecessary to accept the truth of such 
assumptions, but that it is impossible to do so consist- 
ently with other principles and teachings of this 
Church. What right have we to assume that these 
Protestant bodies are cut off from the Church Cath- 
olic? What grounds have we for maintaining that 
they are no longer ‘‘members incorporate in the Mys- 
tical Body’’ of Christ, ‘‘which is the blessed company 
of all faithful people?’’ If membership in the Cath- 
olic Church depends solely upon Baptism, and if Bap- 
tism again, is not a rite limited to the official acts of a 
valid Ministry, but is a rite which can be legitimately 
administered by any baptized person — a principle 
which this Church openly admits both by teaching and 
practice —then it follows inevitably that every duly 
baptized person, of whatever denomination in Christ- 


I2 


The Problem of Unity 


endom, is a member of the Church Catholic, and it 
will'not do to teach the validity of Lay Baptism, and 
further attest our belief in its validity by accepting 
converts from other Protestant bodies without requir- | 
ing further baptism at the hands of our Ministers, 
and then, in the face of all this, deliberately assert 
that these self-same Protestants have no corporate con- 
nection with the Catholic Church. Baptism ts ttself 
incorporation tnto the Catholic Church, as the Prayer 
Book distinctly teaches, and furthermore, as it is the 
only means of incorporation that Christ has provided, 
it is for that very reason the sole test of corporate con- 
nection for any individual or ody of zndividuals. 

This isa point that the editor of Zhe Living Church 
seems to have overlooked, when replying to certain in- 
quiries recently made regarding the word ‘‘Catholic.”’ 
In answer to this very point, viz.,— that all duly bap- 
tized persons are members incorporate in the Body of 
Christ, i. e. the Church Catholic, he says, (Lzving 
Orurch, Feb. 14th, 1903, p: 548)... itis 
quite true that in one sense every properly baptized 
Christian, whether among the sects or in any part of 
the historic Church, is a member of the Catholic 
Church, because such membership is obtained by 
Baptism ; in a second sense, only those who accept the 
authority of some corporate branch of the Catholic 
Church are catholics, for the organization of even bap- 
tized men outside the Church are no parts of the Cath- 
olic Church, though individually the people are mem- 
bers of it.’’ Here the editor confounds two very dis- 


&3 


Apostolic Succession 


tinct ideas, for if he means anything at all by the 
phrase ‘‘the organization of even baptized men outside 
the Church,’’ he means that the organization (and not 
the individual men) is outside the Church, and this 
again can only mean that the plan or pattern upon 
which the body is organized is a plan or pattern for- 
eign to the plan or pattern of the Catholic Church. 
But whether this be true or not, this Catholic plan or 
pattern of organization, whether of bodies in or out of 
the Church, has nothing to do with the corporate, or- 
ganic connection of such bodies with the Church. 
Christ never provided any plan or pattern of organiza- 
tion as a test of corporate connection with His Body. 
The only test of corporate connection which He ever 
authorized is not a plan or pattern of any kind, but a 
Rite —a rite, moreover, which pertains to individuals, 
not to bodies. Let us examine the matter carefully, 
and in order to do so, let us anticipate an illustration 
that will very likely be brought forward. Let us take 
any human society or organization, as for example, 
the Masons, or Knights of Pythias, and let us agree 
to suppose (which, of course, may not be the case) 
that one of these societies consists solely of baptized 
persons. Do we mean to assert that the individual 
membership of these persons in the Church constitutes 
the Masons, as a body, a corporate branch of the 
Church? We reply unhesitatingly, as much so as 
any body or organization of men can be a corporate 
branch of the Church, for whatever by the convention- 
alities of human speech men may refer to when speak- 


14 


The Problem of Unity 


ing of the members of Christ’s Body, or the branches 
of the Vine, C&rzst refers only to individuals when 
using these expressions. He simply does not recog- 
nize bodies or organizations of any kind as the corpo- 
rate members or branches of His Church. 

The Roman Church as such, has never been incor- 
porated into the Catholic Church; the Anglican 
Church as such,” has never been so incorporated; and 
there is no denomination in Christendom which as a 
body or organization has ever been incorporated into 
the Body of Christ. Our Lord indeed intended that 
His Body should have many members, but these mem- 
bers were not to be organizations, but individuals, 
and the sole right by which these members were to be 
incorporated or grafted into the Body, was the rite of 
Baptism—a rite which was instituted for individuals, 
not for organizations. No organization ever under- 
went the rite of Baptism or incorporation into the 
Body of Christ, hence no organization as such, can 
claim to be a corporate branch or member of the Body. 
In short, our Lord does not recognize any organization 
in Christendom as a corporate branch of His Church; 
but only the baptized individual Christians in all lands 
and of all denominations. These so called branches or 
organizations are human distinctions, not divine. 
In His sight, there is not an organized body in Rome, 
for example, that as a body or organization is a cor- 
porate branch or member of His Church, or another 
in England, Russia or America, but in all these 
places He sees only the individual members of His 


15 


Apostolic Succession 


one, divine organization or Body—the Catholic 
Church. The truth of the whole matter, then, is 
simply this:— There is no corporate connection of 
bodies or organizations, as such, with the Catholic 
Church, but only of individuals. The catholic organ- 
ization of corporate individuals, 1s another matter al- 
together, which has no bearing on the problem. 

But we seem to hear the reply made, all this may 
be true, but nevertheless there is something else nec- 
essary to the being or existence of the Church than 
the mere incorporation of individuals by Baptism. 
Members may indeed incorporate other members, and 
so the priesthood of the people may be all that is nec- 
essary to insure initiation into the Church, but Bap- 
tism is not all. The Church exercises other functions 
than that of incorporation. These same incorporated 
individuals must be nourished and sustained. The 
spiritual life vouchsafed them in this new birth or re- 
generation, must be supported by proper spiritual 
food. Even as a child born into this lower world and 
possessing the same natural life that all others enjoy, 
must have this life sustained by constant natural food, 
if it is to continue in this world, so he who is regen- 
erate, and born anew into the higher world, though 
possessing the same spiritual life that all others en- 
joy, must nevertheless have this life sustained by con- 
stant spiritual food, if he is to continue in this higher 
world. To be deprived of natural food in the lower 
world, means to forfeit natural life; and thus to be put 
out of the natural world; and so too, to be deprived 


16 


The Problem of Unity 


of spiritual food in this higher world means to forfeit 
spiritual life, and thus to be put out of the spiritual 
world. No number of Christian people then, even 
though all of them are duly baptized into the Catholic 
Body, can expect to live and grow therein, can expect 
to retain the privileges bestowed upon them in their 
Baptism, and continue corporate members, without 
receiving further Divine Gifts, and as the administra- 
tion of these Divine Gifts is a power entrusted not to 
the people as a whole, but to certain specially ap- 
pointed persons only, it follows that no set of individ- 
uals can continue to maintain their corporate connec- 
tion with the Church that is deprived of spiritual 
sustenance through the absence of a legitimate Min- 
istry. Whether, therefore, there is sucha thing as 
the corporate connection of organizations with the 
Catholic Church or not, it is none the less true that 
in some real sense the people calling themselves 
Protestants, have through their own attitude, deprived 
themselves of the privileges of the Church, and are un- 
questionably cut off —in a literal sense, excommuni- 
cate—from the Body of Christ, and hence can not 
claim with the rest of Christendom, a living connec- 
tion with the same. ‘‘Except ye eat the flesh of the 
Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in 
you.’’ If the members are to continue in the Life of 
the Church, they must receive the spiritual food of 
the Church —they must receive the Holy Commun- 
ion, and as the Holy Communion can be validly and 
effectually administered only by a lawfully ordained 


3 17 


Apostolic Succession 


Ministry,— that is to say, a Ministry that derives its 
authority from Christ, the Head of the Church, 
through the channel of the Historic Episcopate — it 
follows that those who do not receive this rite at the 
hands of such a Ministry, do not receive that spiritual 
food which alone can sustain them as members incor- 
porate in the Body. For the members of the Body 
must partake of the Life of the Body, or else atrophy 
and decay. ‘ 

This view, which was the one held by the Tractar- 
ians, and is still countenanced by a few High Church- 
men, is the only alternative that can be resorted to in 
justification of such wholesale discrimination against 
our Protestant brethren. Let us now examine it care- 
fully, and see to what consequences it leads us. 

If it be true that the spiritual food necessary to the 
sustenance of those duly incorporated in the Catholic 
Church can not be administered at the hands of any 
Ministry that has not received its authority through 
the Historic Episcopate, then it follows, of course, 
that no Protestant body receives such sustenance — 
that all Protestant people are in a condition of spir- 
itual starvation — are under the condemnation of spir- 
itual death —in short, that all Protestants, even the 
saintliest, are as inevitably lost as the most hopelessly 
depraved and criminal of the race. Now whatever 
may be said in defense of such a view, it is quite safe 
to affirm that it has never been officially promulgated 
either by the Church of England, or by our own, and 
it is as repugnant to the vast majority of churchmen 


18 


The Problem of Unity 


as it is irreconcilable with the historic position of this 
church —an assertion which will be abundantly veri- 
fied as we proceed. For the present, let us fully real- 
ize what it means. When we presume to assert that 
persons duly baptized into the Church of Christ — 
proud of their Christian heritage —many of them 
among the noblest types of manhood and womanhood 
the world has ever seen — devoting their lives to the 
service of the Master — searching the Scriptures dili- 
gently to discover and understand His ways — loving 
the Church —yea, the holy Catholic Church — into 
which they have been baptized, above all else in life — 
striving daily through earnest prayer and faith to lift 
themselves a little nearer to the heavenly goal — ob- 
serving all God’s ordinances and commandments to 
the very best of their knowledge and understanding of 
them, —in short, carrying out all of His injunctions 
as strictly and as consistently as they have the light 
and wisdom so to do —to say that these persons who 
grow in Grace and in the power of God all through 
this earthly life, are none the less cut off, excommun- 
icate from that Church into which they have been law- 
fully baptized —deprived of the only food which can 
sustain their spiritual life — which can insure their 
eternal salvation in the world to come — in short, that 
these persons, in spite of all the evidences of God’s 
Grace manifest in their lives, are in reality dying 
spiritually —in spite of all their faith that Jesus is 
sustaining, has sustained and ever will sustain them, 
are none the less damned already, though they know 


19 


Apostolic Succession 


it not, and all because of one most fearful error — the 
fatal mistake of not receiving the Bread of Life at the 
hands of a Minister commissioned through the His- 
toric Episcopate —a mistake which was made, remem- 
ber, under the full persuasion and conviction that they 
were responding toa call of duty—to the voice of 
The Saviour Himself which they dared not disobey — 
when we presume to take such a stand as this, as re- 
pugnant to the common sense of mankind as it is 
fearful to contemplate, we may well pause a moment 
and ask ourselves if our own spiritual condition is as 
secure as it might be. 

But it will doubtless be argued that it is not nec- 
essary to infer all this as a consequence of the above 
position. God doubtless saves such people, but in 
some other way— by some special providence. If now, 
it is meant by this that the mode of the administra- 
tion of the Sacrament is not lawful; is indeed, con- 
trary to Christ’s command and catholic custom, but 
that because of sincerity of purpose God overlooks the 
mistake, and gives them in reward for their faith, the 
true spiritual nourishment that their souls require — 
the true Bread of Heaven —the true Sacrament — 
well and good; but remember that in taking this 
stand, you are surrendering the view that these people 
are cut off or excommunicate from the Church, and 
you are granting us the very point for which we are 
contending. If you grant that in spite of their incor- 
rect observance of the Sacrament, or for that matter, 
in spite of their neglect of it altogether (where they 


20 


The Problem of Unity 


do neglect it) they are none the less because of their 
absolute sincerity of purpose, allowed by some special 
providence to receive the spiritual food of His most 
blessed Body and Blood (and there is no other food 
capable of sustaining spiritual life) then you admit 
that these already baptized persons, in spite of their 
error, are none the less still nourished and sustained 
to-day by the same spiritual food of which you are a 
partaker, and hence are likewise sustained and retain- 
ed in the Catholic Body. 

In short, the worst that can be said of them is that 
they are not catholic in all their practices and obser- 
vances, though they do indeed retain their vital con- 
nection with the Catholic Church. But when we be- 
gin to make mere catholic observances and practices a 
test of corporate connection with the Body of Christ, 
we are not only upon indefensible ground because of 
the reasons already assigned, but because of the fur- 
ther reason that such a test involves the integrity of 
the corporate connection of the members of nearly 
every so-called branch of the Catholic Church in 
Christendom. For the accusation of departure from 
catholic usage may be urged with equal effect against 
Rome, which denies the Cup to the laity, and therein 
and thereby not only departs from catholic custom, 
but from the express formula which Christ Himself 
instituted, as recorded by the Gospels. Moreover, 
if the communicants of Rome can sustain connection 
with the Catholic Body while openly departing from 
the explicit example, teaching and command of our 


2I 


Apostolic Succession 


Lord Himself concerning the observance of the Sacra- 
ment, why should not the Protestants maintain their 
connection with the same, who have violated no ex- 
plicit teaching of The Saviour on this point, but have 
merely departed from a catholic custom believed and 
inferred of men to have been intended of our Lord? 

Surely when we consider the Divine authority be- 
hind both these matters, —the Divine authority 
which we £zow to be behind Communion in both 
kinds, and the Divine authority which we zuzfer only 
to be behind Episcopal ordination, the illegitimate ad- 
ministration of the Sacrament by a legitimate Minis- 
try, becomes fully as serious a matter as the legiti- 
mate administration of the same by an illegitimate 
Ministry. Hence the corporate connection of Ro- 
manists is, if conformity to catholic custom and the 
legitimacy of the Sacrament in question be a test, 
quite as debatable as that of Protestants. But in any 
case, the point which we are endeavoring to establish 
holds good, viz.,— that whether or not the mode of 
administration of the Sacrament of The Lord’s Sup- 
per by such Protestants is valid or no — whether it be 
catholic or uncatholic — if it is admitted that by some 
special providence they do receive the spiritual sus- 
tenance necessary to salvation, their union with, and 
communion in the Divine Body is assured (as there 
is no such sustenance outside the Body) and they are 
therefore as much in the Catholic Church as any 
other body of Christian people. 

But again, if it should be maintained that this is not 


22 


The Problem of Unity 


what is intended, but that by the assertion that they 
are not necessarily lost, and that God designs to save 
them in some other way, is meant that they are to be 
ultimately saved by some special providence outside 
the Church, our reply is simply, that will not do. 
There is no such thing as salvation outside the Church 
Catholic — outside the Body of Christ — nor anything 
in Holy Scripture to warrant sucha theory. Salva- 
tion, by its very nature, is, and can be, only in 
Christ —i. e. in union and communion with Him, 
which means in His Body, the Church. 

This is not to say that there may not be many per- 
sons now outside the vzszble congregation of baptized 
souls, who are none the less, because of the Spirit in 
their hearts, members of Christ’s Body — members of 
the Church — for ‘‘as many as are led by the Spirit of 
God, they are the sons of God’’ even though they 
have not received the authoritative seal or sign of son- 
ship ordained of Christ — nor again is it to say on the 
other hand, that there may not be many persons now 
outside in very truth (because both unbaptized and 
rebellious against the Spirit) who may not yet be 
saved in time to come; but only is it to say that, in 
any case, salvation is, and can be, self-evidently, only 
in the Body of Christ — the Church — for to be saved 
apart from the Body, means to be saved apart from 
the Life of the Body —that is apart from the very 
thing which zs salvation, which is a contradiction 
in terms. What we mean to say, therefore, is that no 
one can be saved whzle outside of the Church. Who- 


23 


Apostolic Succession 


ever is to be saved, must either now be in the Body 
or Church, or he must eventually come into it and be 
saved in it, as there is no salvation anywhere outside 
of it. He cannot remain outside, and be saved outside, 
by any special providence. There is but one hope of 
salvation — viz.,— participation in the Life of Christ, 
and the Life of Christ is only in the Body of Christ. 
In short, salvation can be only in the Church, in the 
Body, because it can be only where the Life is. 

Now just how God expects to save those who, up to 
this time, have never entered the Church, and are 
without the knowledge of it, is a matter which, how- 
ever interesting, does not concern us here. We are 
not here dealing with any such persons, but, on the 
contrary, with persons who have already been admit- 
ted— men and women who have already been duly 
grafted into the Vine—been made members of the 
Body —in short, have been duly baptized into the 
Catholic Church, and whose initiation therein we 
have formally recognized. They have already entered 
it, have known that they were in it, and have all along 
expected to be saved in it. It is not a question with 
them of finding the Church, or of entering into it, 
but having already found it, and having already en- 
tered into it, a question of retaining their position in 
it, of living and growing in it. To say that God is 
going to effect this in some other way outside the 
Church is manifestly meaningless. Now that they 
are already members of the Body, if by their present 
attitude they are denying themselves, either intent- 


24 


The Problem of Unity 


ionally or unintentionally, the Life of the Body, they 
are already ina state of spiritual starvation, a dying 
condition —are already under the condemnation of 
spiritual death, and there is obviously no hope of re- 
demption from this condemnation outside the Church, 
or by any means other than the very one which they 
are rejecting. There is no escape, therefore, from 
the dilemma. Either those persons already baptized 
into the Church, are to-day partaking of the spirit- 
ual food of the Church in some way (whether our way 
or not) and are now growing and developing thereby, 
or else by denying themselves this food necessary to 
salvation, they are withering, decaying, perishing. 
There is no other alternative, for there is no other 
food in earth or heaven whereby their souls may live, 
grow and be saved. Christ has nothing else to give 
them than His own Life, and that Life is within His 
Body, not outside of it. There is no other spiritual 
sustenance than the Body and Blood of the Saviour. 
Unless they eat this Flesh and drink this Blood in 
some way (whether it be our way or some other way) 
they have no life in them. 

Now this being the case, there are but two possible 
positions that can be taken by those who deny that 
Protestants are partakers of the Life of the Body, 
because of the defectiveness of their Ministry and 
Sacraments. Either in consequence of their attitude 
they are (1) now spiritually dying, or else they are 
(2) already spiritually dead. If the first be true, then 
however pitiable their condition, and whatever may be 


25 


Apostolic Succession 


said of their future prospects, they are nevertheless 
at this present moment still in the Body, and hence 
cannot be regarded by us now as other than legiti- 
mate members of the Catholic Church. If the second 
be true, then it is quite indisputable that they are no 
longer members of the Church Catholic —are indeed 
without the Body and this means that eternal judg- 
ment and condemnation have been already pronounced 
—that they have been cast out of the Kingdom of 
God into which they were once incorporated in Bap- 
tism—that they have already been rejected of the 
Saviour, because as dead and worthless branches they 
have been lopped off from the Vine and so have for- 
feited their baptismal heritage. 
Now it is quite safe to affirm that there are few, if 
any persons, that would assent to such a view to-day. 
There are few, if any, who would be willing to ven- 
ture the opinion, even respecting the most depraved 
of criminals now living, and with the prospect of fur- 
ther life before him, that the final and irrevocable 
judgment of Almighty God has been pronounced for 
all eternity; much less would any be willing to ven- 
ture such an opinion regarding that vast number of 
spiritually minded and godly souls, who give evidence 
of God’s life and presence in their characters quite 
as much as the saintliest of our own communion, or 
would further proceed to base a world-wide ecclesias- 
tical polity upon the certainty of its truth. Such 
vain speculations belong to the infallible bigotry of a 
past age. With the impossibility of accepting this 
26 


The Problem of Unity 


last and only alternative clearly before us, it becomes 
evident that in every real sense, these Protestants are 
members incorporate in the Body Catholic, and are as 
much entitled to the adjective ‘‘catholic’’ as any body 
of Christian people. 

We see, then, that the adoption of sucha title as 
that which has been proposed inevitably involves con- 
sequences which are incompatible with other teach- 
ings of this church—in fact, any attempt to insist 
upon Episcopacy as essential to the validity of the 
Sacrament, and so to the very being of a church, 
must lead to such extremes, which are of course, dis- 
astrous to the cause of Christian Unity, and it is diffi- 
cult to understand why such a view of the Episcopate 
should be insisted upon when we are both unprepared 
and unwilling to follow it to its logical consequences. 
For once admit that Protestants are all of them indi- 
vidually members of the Body of Christ, wherein lies 
the necessity of laying so great stress upon their cor- 
porate connection as bodies or organizations there- 
with? — assuming for the moment that there is such a 
thing. Either this corporate connection of their re- 
spective organizations with the Catholic Church is an 
essential to the being of the Church, and so inevi- 
tably to their individual salvation in it, or it is not. 
If it is not, then not only is it unnecessary to lay so 
much stress upon it, but it is positively sinful to do 
so when the unity of Christ’s Body is at stake. For 
so long as it is unessential to the membership of any 
individual in the Catholic Church, and consequently to 


27 


Apostolic Succession 


the salvation of any human soul therein, it is ~so facto 
an unessential feature of the Catholic Church, and 
hence though perhaps important as a matter of prac- 
tical, organic expediency, should never be insisted 
upon as a matter of Divine or spiritual necessity. 
And on the other hand, if it is essential to individ- 
ual salvation then it is preposterous to maintain that 
these persons are even as individuals living members 
of the Church, secure in the hope of salvation. We 
must either assume that Episcopacy, and the succes- 
sion through it, are essential to the salvation of indi- 
vidual souls in the Church, and hence must insist upon 
it as asiue gua non in all our schemes of Unity; or 
else we must openly admit that they are unessential 
and cease henceforth to emphasize them as essentials, 
and must advocate the adoption of the Episcopate up- 
on the grounds of expediency alone —as the only form 
of Church government possible for universal Christen- 
dom to agree upon. In short, there is no use for those 
who dwell so much upon the necessity of the Episco- 
pate to the dezmg of the Church, to attempt to take a 
middle course, endeavoring to reconcile such a view 
with a belief in the catholic membership and salvation 
of individuals who are associated with non-episcopal 
bodies. There is no possibility of holding to the doc- 
trine of Apostolic Succession as essential to the being 
of a church, and simultaneously supposing that we 
can recognize our Protestant brethren as members of 
the Catholic Church; and so conversely, if we cannot 
consistently with our position in other matters, deny 


28 


The Problem of Unity 


that they have such membership individually in the 
Body of Christ, we cannot continue to insist upon the 
Apostolic Succession as essential. The Tractarians 
saw this long ago, and made no attempt to reconcile 
the contradiction. In their view of it, this thing was 
either essential or it was non-essential; it was some- 
thing upon which the salvation of souls depended, 
and hence to be insisted upon at all hazards, or else it 
was only a matter of material welfare and expediency 
which could be dispensed with if necessary. Thus, 
Mr. Newman wrote: — “‘(1) That the only way of sal- 
vation is the partaking of the Body and Blood of our 
sacrificed Redeemer. (2) That the means expressly 
authorized by Him for that purpose, is the Holy Sac- 
rament of His Supper. (3) That the security, by 
Him no less expressly authorized, for the continuance 
and due application of that Sacrament, is the Apos- 
tolic Commission of the Bishops, and, under them, the 
Presbyters of the Church,’’ (Schmucker’s ‘‘Hist. of 
All Religions,” p. 291). That Mr. Newman, more- 
over, intended by these words to emphasize in the 
most literal manner the dependence of each individual 
soul upon the existence and continuity of the Episco- 
pate is abundantly evident from the whole tenor of his 
life and teaching. It is the very essence of the Trac- 
tarian Theology with which he was identified, and of 
which he was one of the most conspicuous exponents. 
Thus the Srzzzsk Critic, one of the principal organs of 
the movement in England, sums up the entire prob- 
lem as follows:—‘‘A church is such only by that from 


29) 


Apostolic Succession 

which it obtains its unity —and it obtains its unity 
only from that in which it centres, viz.,— the Bishop. 

Therefore we declare that this hath ever been 
the doctrine of the Eastern Church’’ (whose position 
on this point he is defending) ‘‘that the Episcopal dig- 
nity is so necessary in the Church, that without a 
Bishop there cannot exist any Church, nor any Chris- 
tian man, no, not so muchas inname,”’ (‘‘Hist. of All 
Religions,’’ p. 294). Dr. Pusey held precisely the same 
position. He declared that none but an episcopally 
ordained Minister could administer the Communion, 
and that the reception of the Communion was neces- 
sary to insure salvation; hence that Protestant bodies 
generally, were ‘‘non-episcopal societies’’ only, being 
no true part of the Catholic Church, and that their in- 
dividual members could, in consequence, have no 
hope of salvation, other than that which “‘the uncov- 
enanted heathen’’ possessed. We see, therefore, that 
whatever opinion may be entertained to-day by the 
more moderate advocates of the Tractarian view, the 
great leaders and founders of the movement them- 
selves, saw only too clearly the inevitable consequences 
to which it led. There is and can be but one object 
in insisting so strenuously upon the necessity of the 
Episcopal Succession. If it is spiritually necessary at 
all, it is so because the validity of the Sacrament of 
The Lord’s Supper depends upon it, and the salvation 
of individual human souls in turn depends upon the 
validity of that Sacrament. In short, it is essential 
to the very dezug of the Church, and to the existence 


30 


The Problem of Unity 


of every Christian man, and if it is not so essential, 
it should not be insisted upon in any proposed plat- 
form of Unity, as though it were, but should be prof- 
fered to the Christian world upon the grounds of ex- 
pediency alone —as the only possible basis of organic 
unity which Christian people can hope to agree 
upon. 

That this was, in truth, the attitude of the Lambeth 
Conference upon the matter, is clearly revealed by 
the significant expression —‘‘the historic episcopate’’ 
—which they adopted in framing the 4th Article of 
their platform. Whatever may have been the opinion 
of individual members, the Bishops as a body declined 
to use the phrase ‘‘Apostolic Succession,”’ realizing as 
they must have done that neither the Anglican Church 
nor the Protestant Episcopal Church had ever com- 
mitted itself to such a doctrine. They fully realized, 
however, the practical necessity for a common form of 
government, in the event of organic reunion, and they 
further realized that the Episcopate, which for nearly 
sixteen centuries had been a characteristic of catholic 
Christianity, and which even since the Reformation 

has continued to be the rule of at least three-fourths 

of Christendom, was — irrespective of all theories and 
opinions as to its Divine institution and authority — 
the only possible form of government upon which they 
could unite, and hence must necessarily be incorpo- 
rated in the platform. 

In further vindication of these assertions, we pro- 
pose in the following chapters to discuss at some 


31 


Apostolic Succession 


length the true attitude of this church upon the en- 
tire subject of Apostolic Succession. 

We propose, in other words, to show that this doc- 
trine which alone supports the Tractarian in his views 
— which alone discriminates against Protestant mem- 
bership in the Catholic Church — which alone would 
justify us in adopting the title ‘American Catholic’’ 
as a fit designation for our church —we propose to 
show that such a doctrine — fraught as it is with in- 
calculable evil to the cause of Christian Unity—is not 
to-day, and has never, at any time, been a doctrine 
either of the Church of England or of this Protestant 
Episcopal Church, and therefore is not lawfully to be 
taught as such, nor cited in any explanation or inter- 
pretation of the 4th Article of the Lambeth Plat- 
form. 


32 


III 


THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND ON THE SUCCESSION 
(A) ARTICLES AND FORMULARIES 


BEFORE proceeding to the proof of the foregoing pro- 
position, we desire that our meaning be perfectly clear. 
Let it be understood, first of all, that we distinguish 
between the Apostolic Succession and the Historic 
Episcopate. By the Historic Episcopate is meant 
merely the historic fact that Episcopacy, or the order 
of Bishops, has existed from the days of the Apostles. 
By the Apostolic Succession we mean the further al- 
leged fact, that the prerogative of perpetuating the 
ministry through the Apostolic rite of the laying on 
of hands is jure divino a prerogative of the Episcopate 
exclusively, the Bishops being alone the successors of 
the Apostles in ministerial rank, and the power of or- 
dination being conferred of Christ himself exclusively 
upon the Apostles and their successors. 

In connection with this last definition, it must be 
borne in mind that such is the commonly accepted 
meaning of the phrase, and the only one with which 
we are here concerned. It is quite true that there 
have been in the past and there are, even now in the 
present, otheriinterpretations placed upon it, but they 
are exceptional. ' 

For the sake of perspicuity, we shall allude to any 
such view of the phrase, if occasion require, as a, ra- 
ther than ¢he, theory of Apostolic Succession, or 


4 33 


Apostolic Succession 


otherwise paraphrase or italicise the usual form. We 
may still further define our position as follows :— 

(1) It is not denied that the doctrine of Apostolic 
Succession is taught from our pulpits, appears in 
many of our Church Text Books, is ardently defend- 
ed by many prominent clergymen, is commonly un- 
derstood to be a doctrine of this Church, and is un- 
questionably popular with a large class of Episcopal- 
ians. 

(2) It is not here asserted that a succession from 
the Apostles, perpetuated through and by the Episco- 
pate alone, is not a fact, but only that such a propo- 
sition is doubtful, can never be demonstrated, and so 
can never be asserted as fact beyond all question; and 
even if capable of demonstration, the mere historic 
fact has nothing to do with the alleged Divine prero- 
gative. 

(3) Upon the assumption that such a succession 
through the Episcopate alone is a fact, it is not here 
denied that the Church of England, and, in conse- 
quence, this Protestant Episcopal Church possess such 
succession. 

(4) It is not denied that the Church of England 
and this Protestant Episcopal Church officially assert 
the existence of an historic Episcopate when both de- 
clare that ‘‘from the Apostles’ time, there have been 
these Orders of Ministers in Christ’s Church — Bis- 
hops, Priests, and Deacons.”’ 

Having clearly defined, therefore, what it is we do 
not propose to deny or assert, let us now-examine the 


34 


The Problem of Unity 


positive side of our position. We may briefly sum- 
marize it as follows:--We positively assert that 
neither the Church of England nor this Protestant 
Episcopal Church has ever officially set forth the doc- 
trine of Apostolic Succession in the sense in which 
that phrase is commonly understood to-day, hence that 
such a doctrine is not to be required of any clergyman 
or layman of either communion as an essential article 
of belief. , 

Let us begin first of all by considering the position 
of the Church of England. Asa certain writer has 
well put the problem, ‘‘the sources from which we can 
judge of the theory of a church are: (1) Its articles 
and formularies; (2) In the case of a State church at 
least, any Acts of Parliament relating to it; and (3) 
The statements or writings of its accredited contro- 
versialists.’’ With the exception of the last clause 
which we must qualify slightly so as to read, ‘‘the 
statements or writings of its accredited controversial- 
ists considered in connection with such articles, form- 
ularies and Acts of Parliament,’’ we think that every 
one will agree that the above is a sufficient summary 
of the main sources of such information. When there- 
fore we come to consider the first of these three, viz., 
—the articles and formularies of the Church of Eng- 
land, what do we find? The answer is briefly stated. 
There is not oneline, either inthe XX XIX Articles, or 
in the Prayer Book upon the subject of Apostolic Suc- 
cession. So far as the Articles are concerned, even 
so prejudiced a writer as John Henry Newman has can- 


35 


Apostolic Succession 


didly admitted this to be a fact. The whole purpose 
of Tract XC was to give an interpretation of the Ar- 
ticles which should be consistent with the ‘‘catholic’’ 
theology of the Oxford leaders. Newman thought he 
had succeeded in this impossible task, yet in com- 
menting upon Article XIX, where the ‘‘Visible 
Church of Christ’’ is defined, he is forced to allow 
that nothing is said of an Apostolic Ministry as nec- 
essary to the proper ministration of the Word and 
the Sacraments, affirming that ‘‘whether Episcopal 
Succession or whether intercommunion with the 
whole be necessary to each part of it—these are 
questions, most important, indeed, but of detail, and 
are not expressly treated of in the Articles.’’ ( Vide 
Tract. XC, Art. XIX, p. 32). Indeed) hat wane 
XXXIX Articles are opposed in their entire spirit to 
the so-called ‘‘catholic’’ views of the Tractarians and 
their descendants in the Church to-day, should be fur- 
ther evident, even if there were no other reasons for 
so believing; first, from the fact that Newman’s form- 
al attempt at reconciliation was condemned by au- 
thority, and, according to Blunt, it was this, and at- 
tendant circumstances, that ‘‘ultimately led to the se- 
cession of Newman, and some of his more intimate 
friends and followers, from the Church of England’’ 
(See Blunt’s ‘‘Dic., Sects, Heresies, etc.,’’ Art. “‘High 
Churchmen,”’ p. 197)and, secondly, to the fact that the 
so-called ‘‘catholic’’ party in the American church 
to-day candidly repudiates the XX XIX Articlesas an- 
ti-catholic, and defends itself against the charge of dis- 


36 


The Problem of Unity 


loyalty upon the grounds that the Protestant Episcopal 
Church does not require any of her ministers to sign 
the same. Of the value of that argument we shall 
have occasion to speak later on. For the present, we 
are not dealing with the Church in America, but in 
England, and merely cite the views of American 
churchmen to show that, however ‘‘catholics’’ in Eng- 
land may argue, when face to face with the necessity of 
signing, ‘‘catholics’’ in America realize the difficulty 
only too well, and frankly decline to admit the au- 
thority of the Articles altogether. But whatever may 
be argued as to the consistency of signing the Arti- 
cles and at the same time holding to so-called catholic 
views of the Church and the Ministry, one thing at 
least must be admitted by all “‘catholics,’’ as it has 
been admitted by one of the ablest of their leaders, 
and is self-evident to everyone, viz.,— the XXXIX 
Articles have nothing whatever to say of Episcopal 
Succession, and this means that the Articles of Re- 
ligion as established by the authorities of the Church 
of England and required to be subscribed to by all her 
Ministers, do not teach the doctrine of Apostolic 
Succession. 

But it must not be inferred from this that the Ar- 
ticles merely fail to teach it. Not only is there no 
such doctrine found therein, but their wording and 
history reveal only too clearly that they were carefully 
framed to uphold a contrary doctrine. Not only does 
Article XIX, in defining the ‘‘visible Church of 
Christ,’’ fail to make mention of the Apostolic Suc- 


37 


Apostolic Succession 


cession of Ministers as an essential characteristic of 
the Church, but Article XXIII in defining what is 
a lawful ministry most significantly omits any allusion 
to Episcopal ordination (an omission simply inexplic- 
able upon the view that such ordination was deemed 
essential by the Reformers) and merely declares that 
‘‘those we ought to judge lawfully called and sent, 
which be chosen and called to this work dy men who 
have public authority given unto them tn the congrega- 
tion, to call and send Ministers into the Lord’s vine- 
yard.’’ But what is thus absolutely inexplicable upon 
the hypothesis that the Church of England believed 
in the Apostolic Succession as essential to the exist- 
ence of a church, and toa lawful Ministry, is easily 
understood upon the hypothesis that the church at the 
time held another and opposite view, viz.,— the valid- 
ity of non-episcopal ordination, and that such was in- 
deed the case is abundantly testified by numbers of 
authorities — notably Bishop Burnet, who distinctly 
asserts in commenting upon this very Article (Art. 
XXIII) that ‘‘they who drew it had the state of the 
several churches before their eyes, that had been dif- 
ferently reformed.’’ (Burnet on XXXIX Articles, 
Art. XXIII). 

Says another writer also, in speaking of the posi- 
tion of the Church of England upon this point: — “‘She 
(the Church of England) carefully abstains from 
making episcopacy an indispensable requisite in a 
Christian Church. Her cautious abstinence on this 
point cannot be ascribed to inadvertence, or the ab- 


38 


The Problem of Unity 


sence of occasion. When the Articles of the Church 
of England were drawn up, discussed, and finally set- 
tled, the question of episcopacy was one of the most 
prominent topics of discussion among theologians. 
In the neighboring kingdom of Scotland, and in sev- 
eral of the Protestant Churches of the continent, the 
government by Bishops had been discontinued. The 
English Church adopted a different course, and ad- 
hered to that form of church order. In forming her 
Articles or confession of faith, the question must 
needs have occurred, ‘Whether episcopacy was to be 
regarded as essential, and therefore to be included in 
that formulary; or as merely expedient, and therefore 
passed over in silence?’ This question we know azd 
occur, was brought under the consideration of the 
framers of our confession, and was decided according 
to the latter of these two views. We learn from Bis- 
hop Burnet, that in framing the 23rd Article, which 
describes those Ministers to be ‘lawfully called and 
sent, which be chosen and called to their work’ — not 
by Bishops of the Apostolic Succession, but by men 
who have public authority given unto them in the con- 
gregation to call and send Ministers into the Lord’s 
vineyard, —we learn from Bishop Burnet that ‘those 
who drew it had the state of the several churches be- 
fore their eyes, that had been differently reformed 
from our own.’ He adds, ‘The general words in which 
this part of the Article is framed seem to have been 
designed on purpose not to exclude them.’ And here- 
in we can unreservedly approve the judgment of our 


32 


Apostolic Succession 


Reformers, inasmuch as it exactly coincides with that 
of Holy Writ. The Church leaves the question pre- 
cisely where the Bible leaves it.’”’ (‘‘Essays on the 
Church’’ By a Layman, p. 486. Seely and Burnside, 
London, 1840. Quoted in ‘‘Primitive Eirenicon,’’ Rev. 
Mason Gallagher, pp. 218,219). Bishop Hooper, al- 
so, who died in 1555, himself one of the Reformers 
and framers of the Articles, not only emphatically de- 
nounces the view of Apostolic Succession now so pop- 
ular, but is quoted by Hardwick in connection with 
this very Article, as saying, by way of interpretation, 
that ‘‘The Church of God is not by God’s Word taken 
for the multitude or company of men as bishops, 
priests, and such other, but that it is the company of 
all men hearing God’s Word and obeying unto the 
same; /est that any man should be seduced, believing 
himself to be bound unto any ordinary Succession of 
bishops and priests but only unto the Word of God - 
and to the right use of the Historic Sacraments.’’ 
(‘‘Hist. Articles of Religion,’’ Hardwick, Appendix, 
p. 276, note.) He further emphasizes the same point 
as to the general view of the Reformers regarding 
what is a ‘“‘lawful calling’ in his comment on Article 
XXIII, (zbzd, p. 280). These two Articles were never 
subsequently revised. Prof. Fisher, the well known 
historian, commenting on the attitude of the Reform- 
ers towards this question, alludes also to the Articles 
as evidence: ‘‘Until we approach the close of Eliza- 
beth’s reign there are no traces in the Anglican 
Church, of the jure divino idea of Episcopacy — the 


40 


The Problem of Unity 


doctrine that Bishops are neccessary to the being of a 
Church, and that without Episcopal ordination, the 
functions of the Ministry cannot be lawfully dis- 
charged. The Articles are obviously drawn up accord- 
ing to the prevalent idea that each national Church is 
to determine its own polity and ceremonies. Episco- 
pacy is not among the notes of the Church, as it is de- 
fined in them.’’ (Fisher’s ‘‘History of the Christian 
Church,”’ p. 373.) We might cite many other author- 
ities were it necessary to do so, but the wording of 
the Articles themselves is evidence too obvious to ad- 
mit of argument, and as one of the greatest champi- 
ons of the exclusive view has, as we have seen, openly 
admitted that the doctrine of Apostolic Succession 
is not to be found in them, and as the ‘‘catholic’’ 
party to-day generally admit that the Articles were 
the product of an ‘‘uncatholic age’’ and should not be 
regarded as authoritative, and as they have further 
declared that it is the duty of the church to correct 
‘the mistakes of the Reformers,’’ which ‘‘mistakes’’ 
we propose to give at some length, further on, in the 
words of the Reformers themselves, it is unnecessary 
to say more at present in this connection. We con- 
clude this part of the argument, then, with the re- 
mark that it is admitted by advocates of both sides of 
the question, that the Church of England does not 
teach the doctrine of Apostolic Succession in her Ar- 
ticles of belief, and that the said Articles were pur- 
posely worded by their framers so as to countenance 
the validity of non-episcopal ordination. Further, it 


41 


Apostolic Succession 


must be borne in mind that however regarded by the 
Protestant Episcopal Church in America, these Arti- 
cles are the officially established Articles of Religion 
for the English Church, and required to be signed by 
all her clergy. Even writers who are extremely par- 
tial to the doctrine in question, admit this fact can- 
didly.’ 

Having disposed of the Articles, let us now inquire 
if there is anything to be found upon the subject of 
Apostolic Succession in any of the other formularies 
of the Church. The only passage in the entire Pray- 
er Book that appears to suggest such a thought, is to 
be found in the Preface to the Ordinal, yet nothing 
could be more erroneous than to suppose that this Pre- 
face teaches or upholds such a theory. It would, in- 
deed, be a most remarkable thing, if, as we are told, 
this Preface is the work of Cranmer, to find it empha- 
sizing a doctrine to which no one was more opposed 
than the Archbishop himself. The man who insisted 
that between bishop and priest ‘‘there was at first no 
distinction’? and who affirmed that ‘‘the ceremonies 
and solemnities used in admitting bishops and priests, 
are not of necessity, but only for good order and seem- 
ing fashion,’’ and who further recognized, and nego- 
tiated with the non-episcopal churches on the con- 


1That they are furthermore her official definitions of doc- 
trines required of all her Clergy is evident from the following 
passage from the “Church Handy Dictionary,” p. 9: Articles, 
The Thirty-Nine, The Church of England’s definition of Christ- 
tan doctrine, and as such they have to be subscribed by all who 
seek Holy Orders.” 


42 


The Problem of Unity 


tinent, and, according to Archbishop Parker, ‘‘that 
he might strengthen the Evangelical doctrine in the 
Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, from which 
an infinite number of teachers might go forth for 
the instruction of the whole Kingdom, called into 
England the most celebrated divines of foreign na- 
tions: Peter. Martyr Vermellius, a Florentine, and 
Martin Bucer, a German,’’ etc., the man that support- 
ed these men there while ‘‘most actively laboring in 
their ministry,’’ and in every way upheld and recog- 
nized the validity of their orders — to find such a man 
as this prefacing the newly prepared Ordinal with 
a defence of the doctrine of Apostolic Succession, 
would, indeed, be a most remarkable phenomenon. 
But it is hardly necessary to speculate upon the possi- 
bility of such a matter, as the Preface itself admits 
of no such construction, even in its present wording, 
after the alterations of 1662. Let us read it careful- 
ly. ‘“‘It is evident unto all men diligently reading the 
Holy Scriptures and Ancient Authors, that from the 
Apostles’ time there have been these Orders of Min- 
isters in Christ’s Church: Bishops, Priests, and Dea- 
cons. Which Offices were evermore had in such rev- 
erend estimation, that no man might presume to exe- 
cute any of them, except he were first called, tried, 
examined, and known to have such qualities as are 
requisite to the same; and also by public Prayer, 
with Imposition of Hands, were approved and admit- 
ted thereunto by lawful Authority. And, therefore, 
to the intent that these Orders may be continued, 


43 


Apostolic Succession 


and reverently used and esteemed in the Church of 
England; no man shall be accounted or taken to be a 
lawful Bishop, Priest or Deacon in the Church of 
England, or suffered to execute any of the said func- 
tions, except he be called, tried, examined, and admit- 
ted thereunto according to the form hereafter follow- 
ing, or hath had formerly Episcopal consecration or 
Ordination.’’ 

Now let it be borne in mind what it is we are try- 
ing to prove. We stated at the very beginning of this 
article that we proposed to show that the doctrine of 
Apostolic Succession had never been set forth by au- 
thority, and, in consequence, belief in such a doctrine 
could never be required of any clergyman. We also 
stated that we clearly distinguished between the be- 
lief in Apostolic Succession and the belief in the His- 
toric Episcopate. With regard to the latter, we have 
nothing whatever to say, nor have we any remark to 
make upon the Church’s custom, consistent with her 
belief in the Historic Episcopate, to perpetuate the 
order of Bishops, and to require that all er ministers 
should receive ordination at their hands. It is not 
the practice of Episcopal ordination in her own com- 
munion that we are finding fault with, nor is it the 
fact that she has officially authorized the observance 
of such a practice within her fold, that we would 
question — but it is the further alleged facts that she 
has officially pronounced such ordination zo be essen- 
tial to the validity of the Christian Ministry — essen- 
tial to the proper administration of the Sacraments, 


44 


The Problem of Unity 


and consequently essential to the very existence of a 
Church, —it is these alleged facts with which we are 
concerned. Inshort, as we have before stated, it is the 
doctrine of Apostolic Succession that we would attack 
—it is the constantly reiterated assertion made in the 
pulpit and in the press that the Church (meaning both 
the Church of England and our own) officially declares 
that Bishops ordain jure divino — that to them, and to 
them only, did the Apostles, acting under the express 
commands of Christ, commit the function of ordina- 
tion, —that through them, and through them erclu- 
sively, was the Ministry to be perpetuated, and that 
so essential is this fact to the existence of a valid 
ministry, to the existence of a valid Sacrament, to the 
existence of the Church herself, that where such a 
custom does not obtain, but Presbyterial or other or- 
dination is substituted, there the Ministry, the Sac- 
raments, the Church cease to be. In short, the doctrine 
that we object to is briefly and cogently stated in the 
famous dictum ‘‘xo Bishop, no Church.’’ 

Now what has the Preface of the Ordinal to say on 
this subject? We may read it as carefully as we 
please, but the most critical analysis will not justify 
the conclusion that it teaches such a theory. 

There appear to be just three separate statements 
contained in that portion of the Preface which in any 
sense alludes to the matter in question, and it is these 
three only, therefore, that we need consider — the re- 
maining portion, bearing upon the proper age of can- 
didates and the testimony as to their character, learn- 


45 


Apostolic Succession 


ing and attainments, being obviously irrelevant to the 
subject. As to the first (1) of these statements, viz., 
—‘‘It is evident unto all men, diligently reading the 
Holy Scripture and Ancient Authors, that from the 
Apostles’ time there have been these Orders of Min- 
isters in Christ’s Church, — Bishops, Priests and 
Deacons’’ —it is obvious that we are merely confront- 
ed with the assertion of an historic fact —nothing 
more, nothing less. The Church merely declares 
that each of these three Orders, Bishops, Priests, and 
Deacons, has been in existence from the days of the 
Apostles. There is nothing whatever said of the spe- 
cific functions of any of these orders — nothing what- 
ever of the exclusive prerogative of the Bishops to 
ordain — hence nothing whatever is affirmed as to the 
doctrine of the Apostolic Succession. So far as this 
statement goes, any one of the three Orders, or all of 
them, may have perpetuated the Succession. It is 
not concerned with any particular mode of succession, 
but merely with the broad fact of the continuity of 
the Christian Ministry in all three Orders from the 
beginning. So far therefore, as one of these Orders 
is herein affirmed to be the Episcopate, so far does 
the Church in this particular passage affirm the fact 
of an Historic Episcopate. We conclude, therefore, 
that although this section is absolutely silent upon 
the subject of the Apostolic Succession it does affirm 
the fact of an Historic Episcopate, in that it affirms 
an Historic Ministry of Bishops, Priests, and Dea- 
cons. When we come to the second (2) of these state- 


46 


The Problem of Unity 


ments, viz.,—‘‘Which offices were evermore had in 
such reverend estimation, that no man might presume 
to execute any of them except he were first called, 
tried, examined and known to have such qualities as 
are requisite for the same; and also by public prayer, 
with imposition of hands, were approved and admit- 
ted thereunto by lawful authority,’’ — what do we dis- 
cover? First of all, then, we discover that in the 
opinion of the Church it was not lawful in ancient 
days for any man to take any of these Offices upon 
himself, unless he had been duly called, tried, and 
examined as to his qualifications, etc., by those al- 
ready in authority. It is also significant that she de- 
clares that persons so approved were always admitted 
into office by public Prayer with Imposition of Hands, 
but most significant of all, is the statement that they 
were ever admitted thereto not by Bzskops, but by 
“lawful Authority.’’ If the whole purpose of the 
Preface were to uphold the doctrine of Apostolic Suc- 
cession — to show that in ancient times the Bishops 
were the sole Divinely constituted instruments for 
the perpetuation of the Ministry, why does it not say 
soin so many words? Ifa matter essential to the very 
being of a Church and Ministry, and if it was the pur- 
pose of the Reformers signally to protest against non- 
episcopal ordination on the Continent, why does 
it not say that whatever is the custom in the pres- 
ent time, ‘‘in ancient times’’ these ‘‘Offices were 
evermore had in such reverend estimation that no 
man might presume to execute any of them, except 


47 


Apostolic Succession 


he were first called, tried, examined, etc., etc., 

and admitted thereunto by Episcopal ordination, or 
by Episcopal authority’’? Why weaken the whole 
point of the argument by using the vague term ‘‘law- 
ful authority’’ when it is the very definition of this 
lawful authority that is the point at issue? 

Upon the assumption that the Reformers regarded 
Episcopal ordination as indispensable to the existence 
of the Church and the Ministry, and to the valid ad- 
ministration of the Sacraments, and upon the assump- 
tion that they wished to emphasize that point in view 
of the practice of non-episcopal ordination going on 
about them, the wording of this clause is indeed ut- 
terly incomprehensible, but upon the contrary assump- 
tion that they recognized the validity of non-episcopal 
churches, and only regarded Episcopal ordination as 
the more regular mode, the matter is clear enough. 
And this is exactly what we find to be the case. 
That the Reformers did recognize the validity of non- 
episcopal churches and their ministries can be abso- 
lutely demonstrated, as we shall see further on, and 
they refrained from insisting upon Episcopacy (pre- 
ferring the phrase ‘‘lawful authority’’ instead) for ex- 
actly the same reasons that they refrained from in- 
sisting upon the Episcopate as an essential feature 
of the Church when defining the nature of the same 
in Article XIX—=in short, for the simple reason 
that they did not regard either Episcopacy or the 
Apostolic Succession as in any sense essential to the 
being of the Church and Ministry. We find, there- 


48 


The Problem of Unity 


fore, that so far as this second statement is concerned, 
the Preface has nothing to say upon the subject of the 
Apostolic Succession, for there are few indeed of any 
Protestant denomination who would dissent from the 
assertion that the Offices of the Ministry have always 
been held in such reverend estimation that no man 
might presume to execute any of them except he 
were admitted thereunto by /azful authority. It is 
a wide phrase, that no Protestant could possibly ob- 
ject to— hence its use by the Reformers. Nor when 
we come to the third and last statement, do we find 
any evidence for a belief in such a theory. 

(3) This statement reads as follows :—‘‘And, there- 
fore, to the intent that these Orders may be contin- 
ued, and reverendly esteemed in the Church of Eng- 
land, no man shall be accounted or taken to be a law- 
ful Bishop, Priest or Deacon in the Church of England, 
or suffered to execute any of the said Functions ex- 
cept he be called, tried, examined, and admitted there- 
unto, according to the Form hereafter following, or 
hath had formerly Episcopal Consecration or Ordina- 
tion.’’ That it was the intention of the Reformers 
to retain all three of the above named Orders in the 
Church of England is here stated, and is questioned 
by no one. That it was further their intention that 
the Bishops should continue to exercise those func- 
tions, Ordination among them, that they had been 
generally accustomed to exercise from the beginning, 
is likewise obvious, and is questioned by no one; 
hence as they expected to retain Episcopacy in the 


5 49. 


Apostolic Succession 


Church of England, it was only natural and expedient 
that they should require Episcopal ordination of all 
Ministers zz the Church of England, But because 
Episcopal government was chosen as ¢hezr way, and 
because they naturally demanded that all those who 
wished to identify themselves with the Church of 
England, and to espouse their way in other things, 
should likewise submit to the requirements of that 
way in this particular, —it is by no means to be in- 
ferred merely from this fact alone that they regarded 
their way as the only way. Aside from all question 
of Ordination, it is the rule of this Church to-day 
that if any minister, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian 
or what not, wishes to become a regular Minister in 
her Communion, —it is the recognized rule that he 
must officiate while in the Church according to the 
rules of the Church—he must wear vestments, ob- 
serve the Rubrics, and conduct all the Services ac- 
cording to the prescribed Form — the prescribed way 
— but this is by no means to assert that we declare our 
way in these matters to be the only way, and that no 
other Forms and Ceremonies, no other mode of wor- 
ship in use among other bodies of Christians is valid, 
or acceptable with God. Such a theory is distinctly 
rejected both in the Articles and in the Preface to 
the Prayer Book, where each National Church is re- 
cognized as having authority to prescribe and alter 
what forms and ceremonies they please. In other 
words, it is obvious that if we expect to adopt any 
one way at all, either of Worship or of Government 


50 


The Problem of Unity 


—if we expect to have any system or order in our 
Church at all, it is obvious that we must insist and 
demand, that such ways and methods be observed by 
all the Ministers of this Church, and that no man who 
is unwilling to submit to these prescribed forms and 
methods shall be accounted a lawful Minister in ¢hzs 
Church, or suffered to execute any of the functions 
thereof. This last statement of the Preface, therefore, 
has as little to say of the zecesstty of Apostolic Suc- 
cession to the being of the Church and the Ministry 
as either of the others, and the most that can be ar- 
gued from it is that, taken as it stands, and without 
any regard to the circumstances under which it was 
written, and the recorded opinions of those who 
adopted it, the wording is not necessarily antagonis- 
tic to sucha theory. Such a conclusion, however, 
can give but scant comfort to those who contend that 
the Church has officially promulgated such a doctrine 
and commands her Ministers to teach it. Looking 
solely at the words of the Preface, then, as it stands, 
out of connection with all surrounding circumstances, 
we are forced to conclude that while affirming the 
existence of an Historic Episcopate, it does not affirm 
the truth, or in any sense teach the doctrine of Apos- 
tolic Succession, while upon the other hand, when 
read in the light of the circumstances under which 
it was written and adopted —its wording considered 
in connection with that of the original Preface, the 
Articles and other formularies of the Church, as well 
as in connection with the various writings of the 


51 


Apostolic Succession 


Reformers, certain Acts of Parliament, and the actual 
practice of the Church —there can be no room for 
any doubt whatever, that it was never intended to 
teach or uphold such a theory, but on the contrary 
was the product of an age and people distinctly ad- 
verse to this view. The Preface to the Ordinal in 
1549, at the time that the first Prayer Book of Ed- 
ward VI was set forth, read as follows: —‘‘It is evi- 
dent unto all men, diligently reading Holy Scripture 
and ancient authors, that from the Apostles’ time 
there hath been these: orders of Ministers in Christ’s 
Church: Bishops, Priests, and Deacons: which offices 
were evermore had in such reverent estimation, that 
no man by his own private authority might presume 
to execute any of them except he were first called, 
tried, examined, and known to have such qualities as 
were requisite for the same; and also, by public pray- 
er, with imposition of hands, approved, and admitted 
thereunto. And therefore, to the intent these orders 
should be continued, and reverently used, and esteem- 
ed, in this Church of England, it is requisite, that no 
man (not being at this present Bishop, Priest, nor 
Deacon) shall execute any of them except he be call- 
ed, tried, examined, and admitted, according to the 
form hereafter following’ (‘‘First Prayer Book of 
Edward VI,’ James Parker & Co., London). Now 
whatever may be thought of the intent of the last par- 
agraph as it stands in the present Ordinal, it is quite 
clear what meaning it conveyed in the Ordinal of 1549. 
First of all, it will be seen that it was not the purpose 


52 


The Problem of Unity 


of this Ordinal to say who were not to be regarded 
valid ministers in the Church of Christ, but only who 
were and who were not to “‘erecute’’ any of these min- 
estertal functions ‘‘in the Church of England.’’ In 
order that these offices ‘‘shall be continued and rev- 
erently used and esteemed in the Church of England, 
it is requisite that no man (not being at this present 
Bishop, Priest, nor Deacon) shall execute any of them 
except he be called, tried,’’ etc., etc. It is directed at 
practice, not at doctrine. But it will further be ob- 
served that there is a clause here which does not occur 
in our present Preface, viz.,— ‘‘not being at this pre- 
sent Bishop, Priest, nor Deacon.’’ What does this 
mean? Even if it is contended that this clause must 
be understood in connection with the foregoing phrase, 
“in the Church of England,”’ so that it should be in- 
terpreted, ‘‘not being at this present Bishop, Priest, 
nor Deacon in the Church of England,’’ not only is 
the force of the above argument in no wise diminished 
(for it is still a matter of executing the functions of 
the Ministry in the said Church, and not a matter of 
the validity of other ministries) but absolutely con- 
firmed, for if it is contended that the above clause 
should be taken in this way, the very addition of the 
phrase, ‘‘in the Church of England,’’ by way of defin- 
ition implies the recognition of Bishops, Priests, and 
Deacons not in the Church of England. But, further- 
more, if it is insisted that such is the correct under- 
standing of the matter, and that directly or indirectly 
it was intended to have regard also to the validity of 


53 


Apostolic Succession 


such ministers, then it is obvious that the argument 
reverts upon the heads of those who use it, for it is 
clear that if it was intended that from that time on, 
none but those already Bishops, Priests, and Deacons 
in the Church of England should be recognized as 
valid ministers, and allowed to officiate in the Church 
of England, unless they should submit to the particu- 
lar form of Ordination prescribed by the English 
Church —it is obvious that no Bishop, Priest, or 
Deacon of either the Roman or the Greek Church 
could be recognized as a legitimate minister of the 
Church of Christ Catholic, or allowed to execute any 
ministerial functions in the Church of England with- 
out submitting to the same, for it is well known that 
the particular Form of the Ordinal of Edward VI dif- 
fered from the corresponding forms of both the Ro- 
man and Greek Churches and it was upon this very 
divergence in form that Leo XIII recently based his 
argument against the validity of Anglican Orders. 
In other words to sum up the whole matter, if the 
above mentioned portion of the Preface is to be un- 
derstood to mean ‘‘no man (not being at this present 
Bishop, Priest nor Deacon zx the Church of England) 
shall execute,’’ etc., then there are but two conclusions 
to be drawn. Either — 

(1) The Church means that she does not recognize 
the validity of any Ministry, save that of her own, 
unless its members have been ordained according to 
the particular Form prescribed by the English Ordin- 
al; or else — 


54 


The Problem of Unity 


(2) While not questioning their validity, she allows 
no Minister of any other denomination to ‘‘execute’’ 
the functions of a Minister within her borders, except 
he shall have first been admitted according to the par- 
ticular form prescribed. If we take the first (1) view, 
then we must understand that not only are all other 
Protestant Orders denounced as invalid, but likewise 
the Orders of the Roman and Greek Churches; hence 
there is no legitimate Ministry in Christendom out- 
side the Anglican communion. On the other hand, 
if we decide to take the second (2) view; while the 
point for which we are here contending, viz.,— the 
validity of non-episcopal ordination, is granted, we 
must conclude that the Church requires not only that 
all Protestant Ministers but likewise all Greek and 
Roman Ministers in coming to officiate at her altars 
must submit to re-ordination after the Anglican form. 

We know that both conclusions are absolutely con- 
trary to Anglican belief and practice — even the most 
ardent advocates of the ‘‘catholic ’’ movement admit- 
ting the validity of Roman and Greek Orders and re- 
cognizing the fact that Ministers of neither commun- 
ion are required to submit to re-ordination. If, 
therefore, there are no other conclusions to be drawn 
from this hypothetical addition of the phrase ‘‘in the 
Church of England,’’ it follows that such a phrase is 
inadmissible, and that the clause, ‘‘not being at this 
present Bishop, Priest nor Deacon’’ must be taken 
in its plain English to mean not being at this present 
a recognized Bishop, Priest nor Deacon in the Church 


55 


Apostolic Succession 


Catholic. Taken in this sense the entire Preface is 
plain enough, and absolutely in accord with the word- 
ing of the Articles and the subsequent practice of 
the Church. The last paragraph becomes merely a 
simple declaration that no man except he be a recog- 
nized Bishop, Priest or Deacon of some church shall 
be allowed to execute the functions of a Minister in 
this Church unless he be duly called, tried, examined, 
and admitted in accordance with the Form of Ordina- 
tion here set forth. This interpretation which is as 
we have said, so perfectly consonant with the Articles, 
and subsequent practice of the Church, as well as 
with the recorded views of the Reformers themselves 
(as we shall presently see) and which, as we have just 
shown, is the only logical conclusion possible, reveals 
in itself an explicit official recognition of non-episco- 
pal Orders. So far, therefore, from admitting of an 
interpretation favorable to the more exclusive theory 
of the Ministry, the Preface to the Ordinal of 1549, 
plainly and distinctly recognizes the Ministry of the 
other Protestant bodies. Nor is there anything to 
be gained from an examination of any subsequent re- 
vision of the text. It must be remembered, first of 
all, that the above is the Ordinal of 1549, and at that 
time the extreme Protestant party in the Church of 
England had not attained its development. That the 
same view should be expressed in the Ordinal of 1552, 
is of course not surprising, but what is surprising in 
view of the general impression now prevalent, is the 
fact that the Reformers of 1559 seeking to establish a 


56 


The Problem of Unity 


more conservative standard, did not change the word- 
ing of the Preface in this particular. When Elizabeth 
gave to her people a form of worship that was to re- 
main practically unaltered until 1662, we find a Pre- 
face to the Ordinal substantially the same as set forth 
by Edward. In order that our readers may see for 
themselves that the views implied by the Prefaces of 
Edward were changed in no essential particular in the 
Elizabethan revision, we will here give the exact word- 
ing of the latter. ‘‘It is euident vnto all men dili- 
gently readinge holy scripture and auncient autours, 
that from Thapostles tyme there hathe ben these or- 
ders of ministers in Christes churche, Bishoppes, 
Priestes, and Deacons: Whyche Offices, were euer- 
more had in suche reuerente estimacion, that no man 
by his own pryuate Aucthorytye, mighte presume to 
execute any of theim, excepte he were fyrst called, 
tried, examined and knowen to haue suche qualities, 
as were requisite for the same: And also by Publique 
prayer, with imposition of handes, approued and ad- 
mitted thereunto. And therefore to thentent, these 
orders should be continued, and reuerently vysed, and 
estemed in this Churche of Englande, it is requisite, 
that no man not beynge at this present, Bishop, Priest 
nor Deacon shall execute any of them, excepte he be 
called, tried, examined, and admitted, accordynge to 
the forme, hereafter folowinge.’’ (‘‘Queen Eliazbeth’s 
Prayer Book,’’ Anc. & Mod. Library of Theo. Lit., 
p. 158). Here is substantially the same Preface as 
that of 1549, containing the same exceptions regard- 


57 


Apostolic Succession 


ing those who are already Bishops, Priests and 
Deacons. It should be further observed also that the 
concluding portion of the Preface indirectly confirms 
the interpretation which we have just placed upon 
the former. For not only as we have just shown, is 
it logically impossible to hold that the former portion 
had reference to any but unordained persons desiring 
to be admitted as ministers in the Church of England, 
(all persons at this present Bishops, Priests or Deacons 
in some church not being included) but the latter 
going on as it does, to speak of the necessary ages of 
candidates for the respective offices, undoubtedly be- 
trays the fact that unordained persons alone were in 
the minds of the writers. Granting that he was will- 
ing to submit to re-ordination according to the pre- 
scribed form, would the Church of England refuse to 
admit a Presbyter or Bishop of some other Christian 
body to her Ministry merely because he was not of 
the age here required? The very fact that the same 
paragraph that makes an exception of those already 
Bishops, Priests and Deacons, declares that none 
shall be admitted to any of these offices except he be 
of such and such an age, proves beyond all doubt that 
it was unordained men only that the writers were con- 
sidering throughout the whole paragraph. It was 
not till 1662 that the above exception was dropped al- 
together from the Preface, and that the latter was 
printed in distinct and separate paragraphs. What- 
ever may be inferred from this as to the intention of 
the revisers of 1662, it is none the less indisputable 


58 


The Problem of Unity 


that all the above facts taken collectively prove that 
from 1549 to 1662— a period of 113 years — the Church 
of England through the wording of the Preface to her 
Ordinal, officially provided for the admission of Min- 
isters of other churches into her ranks without re- 
ordination of any kind. 

What then are we to gather from these changes in- 
troduced into the Ordinal of 1662? Were they in- 
tended as a repudiation of the position of the Church 
during all this former period? Let us see. As we 
have before affirmed, in the wording of the present 
Preface, (which is, of course, the Preface of 1662) 
the revisers never intended to pass judgment on the 
validity of non-episcopal ordination as such, but only 
intended to insist upon such ordination for all Min- 
isters in the Church of England, so that the said 
Church, which was Episcopal zz theory, might be 
Episcopal zz fact. The wisdom of such a measure, 
we are not here considering. The question is, are 
we right or are we wrong in this our contention? 
Was such the intention of the revisers of 1662, or 
was it not? Did they intend by this alteration to 
condemn the validity of other Protestant bodies, and 
so repudiate the former position of their own church, 
or did they merely intend to demand Episcopal ordi- 
nation of all persons entering the Ministry of their 
church, as a measure rendered expedient, if not act- 
ually necessary, for the preservation of the Episcopal 
form of government, which though established was 
even then opposed by a strong element in the Church? 


59 


Apostolic Succession 


Did they here insist upon Episcopal ordination be- 
cause they believed it to be the only valid form, or 
because they regarded it as the more regular form; 
because they regarded it as essential to the being of 
the Church, or merely because they regarded it as 
essential to the well-being of the Church? Was ita 
measure taken because of absolute necessity or merely 
because of present expediency? We maintain that 
the latter, and only the latter, hypothesis will consist- 
ently fit in with all the facts of the case. In the first 
place, it must be remembered that the Church from 
1549 to 1662 not only distinctly recognized the valid- 
ity of the Ministry of other non-episcopal bodies by 
the wording of this Preface and the Articles, but 
furthermore allowed such Ministers to officiate in the 
Church of England without re-ordination, and that 
this continued to be the general custom throughout 
this period. That the Caroline revisers changed the 
wording of the Preface considerably, we freely admit. 
We have no desire whatever to shut our eyes to this 
fact. The question is: to what extent did they go in 
altering the Preface, and what is the significance of 
these changes? Did they go to the extent of chang- 
ing an expedient ruling of the Church, or did they 
go to the extent of changing a fundamental doctrine; 
was it a change of disczpline merely, or a change of 
faith? Did they by their action merely declare that 
the ruling of their fathers had been zvexpedtent to the 
welfare of the Church, in allowing Ministers of other 
Protestant bodies to come into the Church of England 


60 


The Problem of Unity 


without re-ordination, and that from now on it must 
be stopped; or did they mean to say yet further, that 
this action of their fathers had been a szw against a 
fundamental doctrine of the Church, viz.,—the doc- 
trine of Apostolic Succession — that it had been a fla- 
grant abuse of a principle deemed absolutely essential 
to the very exzstence of the Church, and that from 
now on no persons, save such as had received Epis- 
copal ordination, should be regarded as valid Min- 
isters of Christ’s Church Catholic? Let the revisers 
answer that question for themselves. ‘‘And therefore 
of the sundry alterations proposed unto us, we have re- 
jected all such as were either of dangerous consequence 
(as secretly striking at some established doctrine, or 
laudable practice of the Church of England, or indeed 
of the whole Catholic Church of Christ) or else of 
no consequence at all, but utterly frivolous and vain. 
But such alterations as were tendered us, (by persons, 
under what pretences, or to what purpose soever 
tendered) as seemed to us in any degree requisite or 
expedient, we have willingly and of our own accord 
assented unto: not enforced so to do by any strength 
of argument, convincing us of the necessity of making 
the said alterations: for we are fully persuaded in our 
own judgments (and we here profess it to the world) 
that the Book as it stood before established by law, 
doth not contain in it anything contrary to the Word 
of God, or to sound doctrine, or which a godly man 
may not with a good conscience use and submit unto, 
or which is not fairly defensible against any that shall 


61 


Apostolic Succession 


oppose the same; if it shall be allowed such just and 
favorable construction as in common equity ought to 
be allowed to all human writings, especially such as 
are set forth by Authority, and even to the very best 
translations of the Holy Scripture itself.”’ (Vide 
Preface to ‘‘Prayer Book’’ of 1662). . 

It is obvious, therefore, that the striking out of the 
above mentioned exception, together with the other 
changes in the wording of this clause, particularly the 
addition, ‘‘or hath had formerly Episcopal consecra- 
tion or ordination,’’ by which all persons not episco- 
pally ordained were forced to submit to such ordina- 
tion when entering the Ministry of the Church of 
England — it is obvious, we say, from this official ex- 
planation, that all these changes were made for prac- 
tical expediency only, and did not imply that “the 
Book, as it stood before established by law,’’ and in 
which the Preface to the Ordinal accepted the validity 
of non-episcopal ordination, and did not require re- 
ordination —contained in it ‘‘anything contrary to 
the Word of God, or to sound doctrine.’’ Moreover 
wherever in the entire Preface to the Prayer Book the 
object of the revisers is alluded to, it is explained 
that they were not making any changes which in- 
volved doctrine, or anything essential, but only in 
matters of discipline, rites and ceremonies, ‘‘ things 
in their own nature indifferent, and alterable, and so 
acknowledged.’’ They were doing nothing more than 
what had been done several times before, they ex- 
plained, for ‘‘in the reigns of several Princes of 


62 


The Problem of Unity 


blessed memory since the Reformation, the Church, 
upon just and weighty considerations thereunto mov- 
ing, hath yielded to make such alterations in some 
particulars, as in their respective times were thought 
convenient; yet so, as that the main body and essen- 
tials of z¢ (as well in the chiefest materials, as in the 
frame and order thereof) have still continued the same 
unto this day, and do yet stand firm and unshaken,”’ 
€te.,- etc. 

The sum of the entire matter, then, amounts to 
this. The Preface to the Ordinal, even as it stands 
to-day, has nothing whatever to say upon the subject 
of the Apostolic Succession, or the validity or non- 
validity of non-episcopal ordination. The utmost 
that can be affirmed is that, taken as it stands and 
without regard to its history, the present Preface, 
while it does not teach such a doctrine, is not abso- 
lutely incompatible with such a view of the Ministry. 
But whatever constructions may be possible from the 
mere wording of the text as it stands to-day, there is 
but one that can be regarded as that which its framers 
intended. What that one is, becomes immediately ap- 
parent the moment we look into the history of the 
Preface. All the preceding Ordinals from 1549 to 
1662, upon which our present is based, uphold a doc- 
trine distinctly opposite and antagonistic to that 
which is commonly believed to have been intended 
to-day, and our present Ordinal being drawn up, ac- 
cording to the avowed purpose of its framers, with no 
intention of modifying or altering any essential or 


63 


Apostolic Succession 


doctrinal teaching which the former contained, must 
necessarily be interpreted after the manner of the 
former, and must not be regarded as upholding the 
doctrine of Apostolic Succession. 

What we have now fully substantiated from a dis- 
cussion of the Preface itself, we will soon see is abun- 
dantly corroborated from many other sources. Be- 
fore we proceed to the discussion of these evidences, 
however, viz.,—the various Acts of Parliament, 
the writings of the Reformers and others, we must 
briefly allude to two important corroborations of the 
position we have assumed. First of all, on page 479 
of Procter’s ‘‘History of the Book of Common Pray- 
er,’’ note 4, under the head of ‘‘The occasional Offic- 
es,’’ the author, commenting upon the present Ordi- 
nal, has this to say: — ‘‘The Church of England re- 
quires Episcopal Ordination for the ministration of 
her Offices; but it does not follow from this that, in 
her judgment, the ordination of other Churches is 
invalid, because they have not bishops. Cf. Arts. 
XIX, XXIII, XXXIV, and XXXVI; Whitgift, 
Works (Ed. Park. Soc.), I. p. 184. In a Form of 
Prayer (1580) intercession is made ‘for the Church of 
France, Flanders, and such other places,’ as were then 
suffering persecution from ‘the Princes of the earth 
who are become his (Antichrist’s) slaves and but- 
chers,’ (‘‘ Elizabethan Liturgical Services,’ Park. 
Soc. p. 578). 

Here, then, is the opinion of a recognized authority 
upon the attitude of the Church of England toward 


64 


The Problem of Unity 


this question, supported by a quotation from a ‘*Form 
of Prayer’’ in use among the Reformers in the days 
of Elizabeth, in which the religious bodies upon the 
continent are distinctly called Churches, and the val- 
idity of their non-episcopal Orders, together with the 
efficacy of their Sacraments, fully recognized. 

The second fact to which we must allude, affords 
indisputable evidence of the truth of our position. 
It is only szuce the Reformation that Bishops and 
Priests have been distinguished as separate Orders; 
that is to say, as differing from one another in ability 
to perform certain spiritual functions. From Cranmer 
down, nearly every prominent divine of the Church 
upheld the original zdeztzty of Bishops and Priests in 
actual rank, the distinction between them being one 
merely of Office, not of Order —a distinction not of 
Divine but of human appointment, for mere conveni- 
ence and organic expediency. They noted but two 
Orders in the modern, restricted sense of the term, 
viz.,—(1) the Order of Priests ov Bishops, and (2) 
the Order of Deacons. Thus “‘in 1537, twelve years 
before the Ordinal was framed, there was published 
“A Declaration made of the Functions and Divine In- 
stitution of Bishops and Priests.’ It reads: ‘Christ 
and His Apostles did institute and ordain in the New 
Testament certain ministers or officers which should 
have spiritual power, authority, and commission 
under Christ, to preach, etc., and to order and create 
others in the same room and office whereunto they be 
called and admitted themselves, etc. This office, this 


6 65 


Apostolic Succession 


power and authority, was committed and given by 
Christ and His Apostles unto certain persons only, 
that is to say, unto Priests or Bishops . . . The 
truth is that in the New Testament there is no men- 
tion made of any degree, or distinction in order, but 
only of Deacons or Ministers, and of Presbyters or 
Bishops; nor is there any word of any other ceremony 
used in the conferring of this Sacrament, but only of 
prayer, and the imposition of the Bishop’s hands.’ 
This declaration is signed by Cromwell, the King’s 
Vicar-General," Cranmer, and twelve other Bishops, 
and more than twenty other doctors of laws and of 
divinity, including the majority of the compilers of 
the Prayer Book. The same views are presented in 
a revision of this work, set forth by the King, in 1543, 
entitled: ‘A Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for 
any Christian Man.’ 

“**Of these two orders, that is to say, Priests and 
Deacons, Scripture maketh express mention, and how 
they were conferred by the Apostles by prayer and 
the imposition of their hands’’’ (“‘Returning to the 
Old Paths,’’ Gallagher, pp. 11, 12). 

In further evidence we quote Prof. G. P. Fisher: 
—‘‘It had been the common view in the middle ages 
that the difference between bishop and priest is one 
of office and not of order, the defining characteristic 
of ‘order’ being power to perform a special act, in- 
volving a certain indelible character impressed on the 
soul. The priest, as capable of performing the miracle 
of the Eucharist, was in everything, except in office 


66 


The Problem of Unity 


or function, on a level with the bishop. This opinion 
was held even by Bellarmine. It prevailed among the 
Anglican reformers. It is taught in ‘The Institute 
of a Christian Man,’ published by authority in 1537. 
It is asserted by Bishop Jewel in his ‘Apology’ for 
the Church of England, and in his ‘Defence’ of the 
‘Apology.’ The first of these works, translated into 
English by the wife of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Elizabeth 
ordered to be chained in every parish Church in Eng- 
land, that it might be freely read and consulted.”’ 
(‘‘Hist. Christian Church,’”’ pp. 373, 374). 

It is obvious, therefore, that the Reformers did 
not use the term ‘‘Orders’’ in the specific and re- 
stricted sense in which we commonly use it to-day, 
without particularly explaining the fact, and that 
when so doing they recognized two Orders in the 
Church, viz., that of ‘‘Deacons or Ministers’’ and 
that of ‘‘Presbyters or Bishops.’’ When not partic- 
ularizing, therefore, they used the term synonymously 
with the term ‘‘Office’’ or ‘‘Degree’’ in the broad and 
general sense of grade or function. 

Hence when they penned the opening lines of the 
Preface to the Ordinal — ‘‘It is evident to all men 

that from the Apostles’ time there have been 
these orders of Ministers in Christ’s Church, bishops, 
priests and deacons,’’— they were not referring to di- 
vinely appointed distinctions of spiritual power and 
capacity (else they would have specified but two only) 
but merely to the broad distinction of office or func- 
tion, as is proven by the very next sentence —‘‘Which 


67 


Apostolic Succession 


Offices were evermore had in such reverend estima- 
tion,’’ etc. It is obvious, therefore, that the meaning 
which the Reformers intended to convey in this pas- 
sage was a very different one from that which most 
persons try to read into it to-day, and as the wording 
of the Preface in this particular was not changed in 
1662, such must be the correct interpretation of the 
passage to-day. In other words, they were simply 
using the language of the Fathers and ancient authors? 
generally, who used all these words synonymously 
and were not referring to any specific distinction be- 
tween Bishops and Priests, upon which the whole 
theory of the Apostolic Succession depends for its 
justification, and which distinction no less an author- 
ity than the Rev. John Henry Blunt has plainly and 
emphatically declared was not asserted till the end of 
the 16th century (“‘It was not till the close of the 
Sixteenth Century, that the distinction between the 
orders of Bishops and Priests was asserted.’’ Blunt’s 
“‘Annotated Book of Common Prayer.’’ For further 
evidence of the Reformers’ views on this point, see 
Burnet’s ‘‘Hist. Reform.,’’ Am. ed., vol. iv, p. 114). 


2“The Reformers were thoroughly familiar with the language 
of ancient authors; and these authors were accustomed to use 
the words order, degree, and office, as synonymous words. Thus 
Jerome speaks of the ‘/ve orders of the Church: Bishops, Pres- 
byters, Deacons, the Faithful and Catechumens,’ Op., vol. v, 
fol. 41. The learned Bingham writes: ‘St. Jerome, who will be 
allowed to speak the sense of the Ancients, makes no difference 
in these words, ordo, gradus, offictum.’ Book II, chap. i, p. 17. 
Bishop Jeremy Taylor writes: ‘It is evident that in antiquity 
ordo and gradus were used promiscuously.’” (“Returning to 
the Old Paths,” p. 11). 


68 


The Problem of Unity 


If, therefore, it is clear that at the beginning of the 
Preface they were not asserting any God-given distinc- 
tion between Bishop and Priest in point of spiritual 
capacity, it is likewise clear that they were not doing 
so at the end of the same. In other words, when they 
insisted that all Ministers ‘‘in the Church of Eng- 
land’”’ should be episcopally ordained, they were not 
doing so to assert a God-given and exclusively Epis- 
copal theory of Ordination, as opposed to Presbyterial 
Ordination, but rather to perpetuate an ancient and 
catholic custom, important because of its very age 
and catholicity —a common standard around which 
the scattered forces of a future Christendom might 
rally in united ranks. The evidence, then, is conclu- 
sive that it was never in the minds of the framers of 
this Preface to set forth a doctrine looking to any 
God-given spiritual power peculiar to, and character- 
istic of the Episcopate, or to teach any doctrine of 
Apostolic Succession consequent therefrom. So far 
were they from teaching such a doctrine that we know 
that they held to a directly opposite view, viz., the 
original identity of Bishops and Priests, and hence 
the innate capacity of Presbyters to ordain, when nec- 
essity so requires; and that the Church to this day 
tacitly admits such a latent power in the presbyterate 
is manifest from the fact that the Presbyters always 
unite with the Bishop in the laying on of hands at the 
Ordination of a Priest —a custom absolutely mean- 
ingless and impotent, if some such capacity be not 
recognized. 


69 


Apostolic Succession 


It is hardly necessary to observe that this is not a 
practice which has accidentally crept into the Church, 
but one which is set forth by authority (vzde Prayer 
Book, The Ordering of Priests, Rubric) and by only 
another evidence of the fact that in making the al- 
terations of 1662 the Church had no idea of denying 
the power of Presbyters to ordain, but continued to 
hold that they were of essentially the same order as 
Bishops. Observe also that at the Ordination of a 
Priest the Bishop is required to say: —“‘Receive the 
Holy Ghost for the Office and Work of a Priest in the 
Church of God, now committed unto thee by the im- 
position of our [not my] hands.’’ So also in the form 
immediately following, the word is “our,” not “my.” 
It is simply a fact, therefore, that the Presbyters, in 
conjunction with the Bishop, do ordain to-day in this 
Church. 


(B) ACTS OF PARLIAMENT 


Whatever skepticism may linger in the minds of 
our readers respecting the attitude of the Reformers 
and compilers of the Book of Common Prayer with 
regard to the theory in question, it must certainly be 
dissipated when confronted with the Acts of Parlia- 
ment, the recorded practice of the Church, and the 
various writings of her most distinguished divines, 
for the evidence to be accumulated from these three 
sources affords a practical demonstration of our con- 
tention. That the last clause in the foregoing Preface 
was never intended to affirm the necessity of Episcopal 


7o 


The Problem of Unity 


ordination to a valid Ministry, but only the expedi- 
ency of requiring all Ministers in, or coming into the 
Church of England to submit to it, so that the Church 
might be in practice as well as in constitution an 
Episcopal Church, is fully evidenced not alone from 
the wording of the original Preface, but also from 
Acts of Parliament, special provision being made by 
Act XIII, Elizabeth, for admission of foreign clergy 
not episcopally ordained, and such ‘provision, in spite 
of Act XIV, Charles II, not having since been with- 
drawn under any Parliamentary ruling and in the 
further fact that numbers of such Ministers were ad- 
mitted as legitimate clergy of the Church of England 
from the very beginning of the Reformation till the 
year 1820 at the least, if not later. If the Preface 
to the Ordinal had been written with the intention 
of maintaining the absolute necessity of Episcopal 
ordination to the existence of a valid Ministry, and 
consequently to the administration of a valid Sacra- 
ment, then not only has the Church of England 
through Acts of Parliament, and through her actual 
practice for nearly three hundred years flatly contra- 
dicted this essential teaching but because it is essen- 
tial, she has placed herself in an utterly indefensible 
position before the world, and nothing which shé has 
since done through Acts of Parliament or cessation of 
such practice can amend the fault. That she is guilty 
of any such inconsistency, we by no means assert, 
but on the contrary maintain that all such Acts and 
practices are fully explicable and consistent when the 


vii 


Apostolic Succession 


Preface is interpreted in the light of its framers’ 
meaning and intent. Upon investigation it will be 
discovered that at the time of the Reformation the 
English Church found herself in a peculiar position 
with regard to her sister churches on the Continent. 
One with them in general aim and purpose, she differ- 
ed with them as to the extent to which the re-forma- 
tion or remodelling of the Church should go. In 
breaking away from the power of Rome, not only was 
it not her intention to give up anything essential, but 
even non-essential matters which were none the less 
strongly advisable, she likewise desired to retain. 
Episcopacy, though not essential to the existence of 
the Church, had none the less become so general 
throughout Christendom, that to do away with it, 
when it was within her power to retain it was simply 
to break with universal custom, and uselessly and 
needlessly to offend. She decided, therefore, to re- 
tain it. Doubtless, a large proportion of the Reform- 
ers on the Continent would have done the same, had 
their circumstances allowed it. But in adhering to 
Episcopacy and other matters, which the others did 
not retain, she necessarily experienced some embar- 
rassment when greater intercourse between them was 
desired. She recognized the validity of their Minis- 
try, Sacraments, and forms of worship, even when 
she regarded them as irregular and in many cases de- 
fective, and when certain of their Ministers desired 
to be admitted into her ranks, although she permitted 
it without question at first, yet in course of time, it ap- 


72 


The Problem of Unity 


peared to her to be evident that she must require them 
to conform to all her customs, or else must herself be- 
come irregular and defective in organization. For it 
seemed to many to be obvious that she could not con- 
tinue to adhere to any one system of organization, 
and yet allow Ministers of churches organized after 
a totally different pattern to come into her ranks 
without submission to her methods of government. 

The question, then, was what should be required 
of such persons? As was to be expected, it was at 
first deemed necessary only that they should sign the 
Articles of Religion, publicly announce their consent 
to abide by the Canons and formularies of the Church, 
but not that they should submit themselves to Epis- 
copal ordination. 

For that reason, therefore, before the apparent nec- 
essity arose for Episcopal ordination, and in perfect 
accord with the original Preface to the Ordinal, and 
the opinions of practically all the Reformers, Parlia- 
ment passed the XIII Act of Elizabeth, requiring 
conformity and consent to the Articles of Religion, 
but not requiring re-ordination. Here are the exact 
words of the Act itself: —‘‘Anno XIII, Regina Eliza- 
abetha: A. D. 1570; Chap. 12.—An Act for the 
_Ministers of Churches to be of sound religion. Be it 
enacted by the authority of this present parliament 
that any person, under the degree of a bishop, which 
doth or shall pretend to be a priest or minister of 
God’s holy word and sacraments, by reason of any 
form of institution, consecration, or ordering, than 


73 


Apostolic Succession 


the form set forth by parliament in the time of the 
late King of most worthy memory, King Edward VI, 
or now used in the reign of our most gracious sovereign ~ 
lady, before the feast of the nativity of Christ next 
following, shall, in the presence of the bishop, or 
guardian of the spiritualities of some one diocese 
where he hath or shall have Ecclesiastical living, de- 
clare his assent, and subscribe to all the articles of re- 
ligion which only concerns the confession of the true 
Christian faith, and the doctrine of the sacraments, 
comprised in a book imprinted and intituled, Articles, 
whereupon it was agreed by the archbishops and bis- 
hops of both provinces, and the whole Clergy in Con- 
vocation holden at London in the year of our Lord 
God one thousand five hundred and sixty-two, accord- 
ing to the computation of the Church of England, for 
the avoiding of the diversities of opinions, and for 
the establishing consent touching true religion put 
forth by the queen’s authority; and shall bring from 
such bishop or guardian of spiritualities, in writing, 
under his seal authentick, a testimonial of such assent 
and subscription; and openly on some Sunday, in 
time of public service before noon, in every church 
where by reason of any Ecclesiastical living he ought 
to attend, read both the said testimonial, and the 
said Articles; upon pain that every such person which 
shall not before the said feast, do as above appointed, 
shall be zfso facto deprived, and all his ecclesiastical 
promotion shall be void, as if he then were naturally 
dead.’’ Here, then, we see an Act of Parliament 


74 


The Problem of Unity 


specially providing for those who had not been ordain- 
ed after the manner of the English Church, and de- 
manding their subscription to the book ‘“‘entituled 
Articles’? together with their public declaration of 
conformity, but not requiring re-ordination, and we 
know on unimpeachable authority that in accordance 
with this Act, numbers were admitted not only into 
the Ministry, but to benefices and preferments in the 
Church of England with nothing better than Presby- 
terian ordination. Even Keble, high churchman as 
he is, does not hesitate to acknowledge this fact, bear- 
ing further testimony that this was the ordinary in- 
terpretation of the above Act, when he says (Preface to 
Hooker’s Works, p. 38):—‘‘For nearly up to the time 
when he (Hooker) wrote, numbers had been admitted to 
the Ministry of the Church of England, with no better 
than Presbyterian ordination; and it appears by Trav- 
er’s supplication to the Council, that such was the 
construction not uncommonly put upon the statute of 
the 13th of Elizabeth, permitting those who had re- 
ceived orders in any other form than that of the Eng- 
lish Service Book, on giving certain securities, to ex- 
ercise their calling in England.”’ 

So also Prof. Geo. P. Fisher, in commenting upon 
the significance of this act, declares that ‘‘the statute 
of the 13th of Elizabeth made room for Ministers or- 
dained abroad, according to other forms than those 
prescribed in the Prayer Book, to be admitted to par- 
ishes in England. Such Ministers, as is shown by 
numerous incontrovertible proofs, were thus admitted 


75 


Apostolic Succession 


in considerable numbers through Elizabeth’s reign 
and, even far into the next century,’’ (“‘Hist. Christ- 
ian Church,’’ p. 374). We have further abundant 
evidence of these facts which we shall adduce later on 
under the heading of ‘‘Statements of Accredited Writ- 
ers and Controversialists ;’’ but for the present we wish 
to confine ourselves to the Acts of Parliament alone. So 
far we have demonstrated that (1) the Articles (2) 
the Preface to the Ordinal and (3) the Act XIII of 
Elizabeth are all agreed in admitting the validity of 
non-episcopal Ordination — in short that all the offic- 
ial utterances of the Church from 1549 to 1662 are 
against the theory of Apostolic Succession. Are we 
then to infer that the Church changed her entire front 
on this matter at the time of the Restoration? Such 
indeed appears to be the ordinary assumption, but the 
Act XIV of Charles II no more changes the essential 
ruling of the Act XIII of Elizabeth on this point than 
the Preface to the Ordinal of 1662 changed the essen- 
tial doctrine* contained in the Preface to the former 
Ordinal. Let us see what the Act in question has 
to say on the subject. Act XIV, Carol. II, Sections 
14, 15: “‘And be it further enacted by the Authority 
aforesaid, That no person whatsoever shall thenceforth 
be capable to be admitted to any Parsonage, Vicarage, 


*'We speak of the Preface as containing a doctrine, for those 
who cite it, imagining they can prove the truth of the Church’s 
belief in the doctrine of Apostolic Succession, self-evidently as- 
sume it; and if it does not contain a doctrine, then it plays no 
part whatever in this question, and whatever changes have been 
made in it, and for whatever purpose, matter nothing. 


76 


The Problem of Unity 


Benefice or other Ecclesiastical Promotion or Dignity 
whatsoever nor shall presume to Consecrate and Ad- 
minister the Holy Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper be- 
fore such time as he shall be ordained Priest according 
to the form and manner in and by the said Book pre- 
scribed unless he have formerly been made Priest by 
Episcopal Ordination; upon pain to forfeit for every 
offense the sum of one hundred pounds; one moiety 
thereof to the King’s Majesty; the other moiety there- 
of to be equally divided between the poor of the Par- 
ish where the offence shall be committed; and such 
person or persons as shall sue for the same by Action 
of Debt, Bill, Plaint or Information in any of his Majes- 
ty’s Courts of Record, wherein no Essoin, Protection 
or Wager of Law shall be allowed, and to be disabled 
from taking or being admitted into the Order of Priest 
by the space of one whole year then next following. 
Provided that the penalties in this Act shall not extend 
to the Foreigners or Aliens of the Foreign Reformed 
Churches allowed or to be allowed by the King’s Ma- 
jesty, His Heirs and Successors in England.’ ‘This 
proviso is too often lost sight of. That the Act is far 
more stringent in its requirements than the Act of 
Elizabeth is quite true, and for the same reason that 
the Preface to the Ordinal of 1662 is far more stringent 
than the Preface to the former Ordinal. In fact this 
Act, in this particular, is nothing more than the civil 
enforcement of the ecclesiastical requirements of the 
Preface of 1662, and thus its very wording proves the 
correctness of our interpretation of that Preface. It 


77 


Apostolic Succession 


was the opinion of many that the too free allowance 
of presbyterially ordained Ministers to execute the 
functions of Ministers in the Church of England, was 
in its practical effect militating against Episcopal 
government. It was necessary to suppress it, if pos- 
sible, or, at least, put some further restriction upon 
it, not because of any feeling that it was contrary to 
fundamental Church doctrine, but because it was inex- 
pedient. Heretofore, any foreign Minister who wish- 
ed to enter the Ministry of the Church of England 
could do so, and could be promoted to all the ecclesi- 
astical benefices and dignities accruing therefrom, by 
merely subscribing the Articles and publicly declaring 
conformity. Now all this was deemed inadvisable. 
From henceforth, no foreign Minister should be al- 
lowed to enter the Ministry of the Church of Eng- 
land, and obtain ecclesiastical preferment, unless he 
had been episcopally ordained, except those to whom 
the King himself, by royal decree, gave his personal 
permission. This naturally, made the undertaking a 
much more difficult matter than it had been hereto- 
fore, and its practical effect was to diminish the num- 
ber of such admissions to a marked extent; but while 
the result was indeed adverse to the former practice, 
it reflected in no wise upon the views of the earlier 
Reformers that such Presbyterial Ordination was val- 
id — the very proviso that the King might, at his dis- 
cretion, allow the custom to continue in special in- 
stances, in itself proving that no essential doctrine 
was involved, and that the attitude of the Church on 


78 


The Problem of Unity 


the question of the validity of such Orders was pre- 
cisely the same as it had ever been — that indeed the 
former ‘‘Book’’ as it had ‘‘stood before established 
by law,’’ did ‘‘not contain in it anything contrary to 
the Word of God, or to sound Doctrine’’ and, in 
short, the entire set of changes and alterations, adopt- 
ed by the revisers of 1662, did not affect the Church 
of England in any vital or essential point of doctrine 
or principle, —the exact reverse of that which has 
always been maintained by the extreme Churchmen of 
England and America. In further proof of the cor- 
rectness of our position, we quote again from Prof. 
Fisher’s ‘‘History of the Christian Church.’’ On 
page 374, immediately succeeding the passage from 
which we have already quoted, wherein he declared 
that in consequence of the permission granted by the 
‘statute of XIII of Elizabeth, such Ministers were ad- 
mitted ‘‘zx considerable numbers through Elizabeth’s 
reign, and even far into the next century,’’ he goes 
on to say that, ‘‘down to the era of Laud and Charles I, 
when the sacerdotal theory of Episcopacy had taken 
root, the validity of the ordination received by the 
Ministry of foreign Churches was not seriously im- 
pugned, nor was there an interruption of ecclesiasti- 
cal fellowship between them and the Church of Eng- 
land. Even in the great reaction after the restoration 
of the Stuarts, the Act of Uniformity, in 1661, which 
required Episcopal ordination of all incumbents of 
benefices, added the proviso ‘that the penalties in this 
Act shall not extend to the foreigners or aliens of the 


79 


Apostolic Succession 


foreign Reformed Churches allowed, or to be allowed, 
by the King’s Majesty, his heirs and successors in 
England.’’’* Again, in a little work entitled, ‘‘Ro- 
manism, Protestantism, Anglicanism,’’ (pub. by The 
Prot. Epis. Soc. for Promotion of Evangelical Know- 
ledge, New York, 1883), in which the writer assumes 
the same attitude towards the doctrine of Apostolic 
Succession that we are here defending, we find the 
following: — ‘‘But perhaps the most conclusive of all 
considerations as to the position which the English 
Church occupies in regard to this question is to be 
found in the facts that (1) up to the year 1820, i. e., 
the end of George III’s reign, a large proportion of 
the clergy in the Channel Islands were not Episco- 
pally ordained, although they ministered according to 
the formularies of the Church of England, and formed 
a part of the clergy of the Diocese of Winchester; (2) 
that the Kings of England up to the same date con- 
stantly had attached to their households a Presbyte- 
rian chaplain; (3) that the Queen to this day has the 
same in Scotland; and (4) that the Act of Uniformity 
of Charles II—the very Act and the first and only 
Act which made it necessary as a rule that all persons 
thereafter to be admitted to the cure of souls in Eng- 
land should have been episcopally ordained — con- 
tains also a clause’ (here is appended in a foot-note 

‘Indeed from the references to this Act in the writings of 
many persons, it would appear that the matter of benefices and 
preferments had quite as much to do with this proposition as 


any supposed danger threatening Episcopal government. V7de 
writings of Bps. Hall and Burnet. 


80 


The Problem of Unity 


the proviso which we have quoted from the Act) 
“specially permitting the King to admit persons not 
so ordained, who were foreigners and ordained in the 
foreign Protestant Churches, to preferments in the 
English Church without re-ordination. This per- 
missive was acted upon by King Charles II within a 
very few years after it was passed, and it would doubt- 
less be within the power of her present Majesty to 
act upon it again if she should see fit todo so. This 
being the actual position of the English Church from 
the reign of Elizabeth to the present time, it is 
nothing less than an absurdity to talk of it as holding 
the ‘doctrine of the Apostolic Succession,’’’ (pp. 
44, 45). 

Whether the writer is correct in his statement that 
the proviso holds good at the present time, we are 
unable at this moment to affirm, as certain amend- 
ments were introduced under the late Queen Vic- 
oria, the precise bearing of which on this point we 
have been unable to ascertain. It would appear, how- 
ever, from a passage in the little work of Rev. Dr. 
Stevens on the ‘‘Genesis of the American Prayer 
Book,”’ that the Act of Uniformity has in no wise 
touched the matter. He says:—‘‘The revision of 
1662 may be justly called the last, because no changes 
of any moment have been made since by the orders- 
in-council which have necessarily been issued, on the 
accession of successive sovereigns — and by the amend- 
ment to the Act of Uniformity passed in the reign of 
Queen Victoria. The Church of 1662, therefore, has 


7 81 


Apostolic Succession 


been from that date and is to-day the Eeclesta docens 
of England,’’ (p. 67). 

In conclusion, therefore, we would say that while 
it is indisputable that the year 1662 marks the be- 
ginning of an era of churchmanship far more exclusive 
than that which obtained during the previous period, 
the fact in no wise affects our contention that the official 
teaching of the Church has remained the same from 
the beginning — the Preface to the Prayer Book open- 
ly declaring the fact, and all subsequent Acts bear- 
ing witness to the same. There can be no question 
that the tendency of many churchmen at the time of 
the Restoration was to change the teachings of the 
Reformers on many points —notably their teaching 
regarding the importance of Episcopal ordination — 
but what the High Church party was aiming to do, 
and attempted to accomplish, and what it succeeded 
in doing, are two very different things. 

All these more stringent measures were proposed, 
no doubt, in the hope of gaining certain material and 
essential changes, but they nevertheless failed of their 
ultimate object — so far failed, that when the revised 
Prayer Book was set forth as the full embodiment of 
the Church’s final and official decision in the matter, 
it was seen to contain no changes or amendments of 
vital importance, and was officially declared by the 
Revisers in the Preface to be in full accord with all 
the doctrines and essentials of ‘‘the Book, as it stood 
before established by law.’’ What many of the 
churchmen of Charles’ time attempted to do, there- 


82 


The Problem of Unity 


fore, and what they actually accomplished, — that is, 
what the Church officially did, are two very distinct 
matters which must not be confused in this argument. 


(c) TESTIMONY OF ACCREDITED WRITERS 


Having demonstrated what is the actual official 
teaching of the Church on this subject, as contained 
in her Articles and other formularies, and as enforced 
by Acts of Parliament, we shall now offer the testi- 
‘mony of many accredited writers as to her actual prac- 
tice, as well as to the prevailing sentiments of her 
churchmen during, and subsequent to, the period of 
the Reformation. 

(a) As regards the actual practice of the Church 
of England, we submit the following passages, extract- 
ed from a collection of quotations made by the Rev. 
Mason Gallagher in his little work, entitled ‘‘The 
Primitive Eirenicon,’’ (New York: Hind & Hough- 
ton, 1868, p. 3 e seq.) 


Strype (died 1737) 

Strype, the historian, on the Act of Elizabeth: ‘‘By 
this the ordinations of the foreign reformed churches 
were made valid, and those that had no other orders 
were made the same capacity with others, ¢o enjoy any 
place within England, merely on their subscribing to 
ine Axticles,”” (vol. ii, p. 514): 


Keble 


Keble, one of the founders of the Oxford move- 
ment, admits, in his preface to ‘‘Hooker’s Works,”’ 


83 


Apostolic Succession 


(p. 76) that ‘“‘nearly up to the time that Hooker wrote 
(1594) numbers had been admitted to the Ministry of 
the Church of England with no better than Presbyte- 
rian ordination.”’ 


Bishop Hall (died 1656) 


Bishop Hall (vol. x, p. 341) writes: —‘‘The stick- 
ing at the admission of our brethren, returning from 
foreign reformed churches was not in the case of ordi- 
nation, but of institution; they had been acknow- 
ledged Ministers of Christ without any other hands 
laid on them; but according to the laws of our land, 
they were not capable of institution to benefice, un- 
less they were so qualified as the statutes of this realm 
doth require. And, secondly, I know those, more 
than one, that by virtue of that ordination, which 
they have brought with them from other reformed 
churches, have enjoyed spiritual promotions and liv- 
ings without any exceptions against the lawfulness of . 
their callings.’’® 


5 It will be noticed that this testimony of Bishop Hall directly 
confirms our contention that the disputes which ultimately led 
to the strictures of 1662, had no reference to the validity ot non- 
episcopal ordination, but were disputes regarding the exfedz- 
ency of allowing presbyterally ordained clergy to be instituted 
to benefices and publicly supported out of the pockets of a peo- 
ple who desired Episcopal Government and episcopally or- 
dained Ministers. Our Church to-day does not regard vest- 
ments as essential to the rendering of a service acceptable to 
God, but none the less if any number of our legimately ordain- 
ed clergy were suddenly to discard their vestments and insist 
upon conducting their services in citizen’s dress, there would be 
acry of indignation, and Canons would doubtless be passed 
requiring that henceforth no unvested minister should be allow- 


84 


The Problem of Unity 


Bishop Costin (died 1672) 

Bishop Cosin, in his letterto Cordel, states: —‘‘If 
at any time, a Minister so ordained in these French 
Churches came to incorporate himself in ours, and to 
receive a public charge or cure of souls among us, in 
the Church of England (as I have known some of them 
to have done of late, and can instance in many others 
before my time), our Bishops did not re-ordain him to 
his charge, as they must have done if his former ordi- 
nation in France had been void; nor did our laws re- 
quire more of him than to declare his public consent 
to the religion received among us, and subscribe the 
Articles established,’’ (p. 231, Am. Ed.). 


Bishop Burnet (died 1714) 


Bishop Burnet, in the ‘History of His Own 
Times,’’ (vol. i, p. 332) testifies that to the year 1662, 
““those who came to England from the foreign Churches 
had not been required to be re-ordained among us.’’ In 
his “‘Vindication’”’ (p. 84) he says: —‘‘No bishop in 
Scotland, during my stay in that Kingdom, did so much 
as desire any of the Presbyterians to be ordained.”’ 


Bishop Fleetwood (died 1723) 


Bishop Fleetwood, in his works (p. 552) writes of 
the Church of England: —‘‘Certainly it was her prac- 


ed to officiate in this Church. This would be both natural and 
right, but it would be very erroneous to suppose, simply because 
such a law had been passed, that this Church did not regard 
any service rendered by an un-vested minister acceptable to 
God, or any sacrament efficacious. 


85 


Apostolic Succession 


tice during the reigns of King James and Charles I; 
and to the year 1661 we had many Ministers from 
Scotland, from France, and the Low Countries, who 
were ordained by Presbyters only, and not by bish- 
ops, and they were instituted into benefices with cure; 
and yet were never re-ordained, but only subscribed 
the Articles.” 


Hallam and Macaulay 


Hallam, in his ‘‘Contsitutional History’’ (p. 224), 
writes :—‘“‘It had not been unusual from the very begin- 
ning of the Reformation, to admit Ministers, ordained 
in foreign Churches, to benefices in England; no re- 
ordination had ever been practiced with respect to 
those who had received imposition of hands in a regu- 
lar Church; and hence it appears that the Church of 
England, whatever tenet might have been broached 
in controversy, did not consider the ordination of 
Presbyters invalid.’’ 

Macaulay, in his ‘‘History,’’ (vol. i, p. 132), states: 
—‘‘Episcopal ordination was now (1662) for the first 
time, made an indispensable qualification for prefer- 
ment.”’ 

Macaulay, again, in another passage, not cited by 
the writer from whom we are quoting, speaks with 
even greater emphasis. In vol. i, chap. 1, he says:— 
“‘The Church of Rome held that episcopacy was of di- 
vine institution, and that certain supernatural graces 
of a high order had been transmitted by the impo- 
sition of hands through fifty generations, from the 


86 


The Problem of Unity 


eleven who received their commission on the Galilean 
Mount to the bishops who met in Trent. A large 
body of Protestants, on the other hand, regarded prel- 
acy as positively unlawful, and persuaded themselves 
that they found a very different form of ecclesiastical 
government prescribed in Scripture. The founders 
of the Anglican Church took a middle course. They 
retained episcopacy, but they did not declare it to be 
an institution essential to the welfare of a Christian 
soctety, or to the efficacy of the sacraments.” 

Bishop Chas. E. Cheney, of the Reformed Episco- 
pal Church, has also collected valuable testimony on 
this point. In his little work, entitled ‘‘What Do 
Reformed Episcopalians Believe?’’ we find the follow- 
ing (Appendix, p. 175 st seg.):—‘‘Strype’s ‘Life of 
Archbishop Grindal’ (quoted in Goode on ‘Orders’), 
bears the most unequivocal evidence on this point. 
It gives the exact language of the commission given 
by Grindal to John Morrison, a Minister ordained by 
Presbyterial hands in Scotland, permitting him to ex- 
ercise his office in the English Church. It runs as 
follows: ‘Since you, the aforesaid John Morrison, 
about five years past, in the town of Garvet, in the 
county of Lothian, and kingdom of Scotland, were ad- 
mitted and ordained to sacred orders and the holy 
ministry, by the imposition of hands, according to the 
laudable form and rite of the Reformed Church of 
Scotland . . . we therefore as much as lies in us, 
and as by right we may, approving and ratifying the 
form of your ordination and preferment done in such 


87 


Apostolic Succession 


manner as aforesaid, grant to you a license and facul- 
ty, with the consent and express command of the most 
Reverend Father in Christ, the Lord Edmund, by the 
Divine Providence Archbishop of Canterbury, to cel- 
ebrate divine offices, to administer the Sacraments,’’ 
etc. On page 178, we read:—‘‘The range within 
which ordination was considered valid in the Church 
of England in the age succeeding the Reformation, is 
shown more strongly in the case of Travers, Hooker’s 
celebrated Coadjutor at the Temple. It is uncertain 
whether Travers had received Deacon’s orders accord- 
ing to the Church of England (for he had a divinity de- 
gree from Cambridge), but he was a member from the 
first of the Presbyterian Church at Wandsworth. Go- 
ing abroad, he was certainly ordained a Presbyter at 
Antwerp, by the synod there in 1578. Yet we find him 
associated with Hooker as preacher at the Temple, 
1592. During this long interval then, of fourteen 
years, his Presbyterian orders had been allowed. He 
was also private tutor in the family of Lord Treasur- 
er Cecil. When at length silenced by Whitgift, it 
was objected to him first, that he was not a lawfully 
ordained Minister of the Church of England; second- 
ly, that he preached without a license; thirdly, that 
he had violated discipline and decency by his public 
refutation of what Hooker, his superior in the Church, 
had advanced from the same pulpit upon the same day. 
Had the first ground been felt by his opponents to be 
impregnable, the other charges would probably have 
been omitted, and Travers would have been dismissed, 


88 


The Problem of Unity 


no doubt, inasummary way. But it would seem that 
the stress was laid chiefly on the two latter articles; 
and, indeed, Travers was prepared with an answer to 
the first, and with an answer that he did not fail to 
use. An Act had been passed in the thirteenth year 
of Queen Elizabeth, under which he was securely 
sheltered. It recognizes the validity of foreign or- 
ders; and conveys to us historical evidence that Min- 
isters ordained by Presbyterian Synods were at that 
time beneficed in the Church of England. It was 
sufficient that the conforming Minister should de- 
clare his assent, and subscribe to the Articles of the 
Church of England. Travers in his petition to the 
privy council pleads the force of this statute, and de- 
clares that many Scottish Ministers were then holding 
benefices in England beneath its sanction.’’ 

We may also call attention to the fact that many, 
if not all, of the celebrated scholars whom Archbish- 
op Cranmer invited to England to assist him in the 
work of reform, were Ministers of foreign reformed 
churches, and appear to have continued in the per- 
formance of their ministerial functions in the Church 
of England. This has been disputed but there ap- 
pears to be indubitable evidence in its favor. To 
quote the author of the ‘‘Primitive Eirenicon’’ again: 
—“‘In the ‘Zurich Letters’ we find Peter of Perugia 
writing to Bullinger thus from Cambridge: —‘Martin 
Bucer, Bernadine, and Peter Martyr are most actively 
laboring in their Ministry.’ The martyr Bradford, — 
whom of all the Reformers, the Romanists sought 


89 


Apostolic Succession 


most earnestly to pervert to their creed,—in his fare- 
well to Cambridge, exclaims, ‘Remember the read- 
ings and preachings of God’s true prophet and preach- 
er, Martin Bucer,’:’’:)(“Prim. Ei:;’ Speen 

However this may be, it must be apparent from the 
number of the witnesses and the clear and emphatic 
manner in which they allude to the “‘many’’ or the 
‘‘numbers’’ of persons who were admitted into the 
Ministry of the Church of England during all this per- 
iod —from. the Reformation to 1662 — with no better 
than Presbyterian ordination; to say nothing of the de- 
finite instances mentioned, and even the form of the 
commission issued by Grindal upon one occasion — 
that this was not only no uncommon occurrence, but 
a practice; a practice, moreover, which, as we have 
shown, had been officially sanctioned by the Articles 
and other formularies, as well as by legislative enact- 
ment, and was only discouraged, and in the main dis- 
continued at the time of the Restoration upon the 
grounds of expediency —not of doctrine. In short, 
the actual extent and significance of the practice can- 
not be better summarized than in the words of that 
most learned historian, Prof. George P. Fisher, whom 
we have already had occasion to quote. ‘“The statute 
of the 13th of Elizabeth made room for Ministers or- 
dained abroad, according to other forms than those 
prescribed in the Prayer Book, to be admitted to Par- 
ishes in England. Such Ministers, as is shown by 
numerous incontrovertible proofs, were thus admitted 
in considerable numbers, through Elizabeth’s reign, 


go 


The Problem of Unity 


and even far into the next century. Down to the era 
of Laud and Charles I, when the sacerdotal theory of 
the Ministry had taken root, the validity of the ordi- 
nation received by the Ministry of foreign churches 
was not seriously impugned, nor was there an inter- 
ruption of Ecclesiastical fellowship between them and 
the Church of England. Even in the great re-action 
after the restoration of the Stuarts, the Act of Uni- 
formity, in 1661, which required Episcopal ordination 
of all incumbents of benefices, added the proviso ‘that 
the penalties of this Act shall not extend to the for- 
eigners or aliens of the foreign Reformed Churches, 
allowed or to be allowed, by the King’s Majesty, his 
heirs and successors in England.’’’ That this pro- 
viso was acted upon by Charles II a short time after, 
has also been testified to by another witness, 
viz.,—the author of ‘‘Romanism, Protestantism, 
Anglicanism,’’ previously quoted, who also cites 
several instances in confirmation of the fact that 
the proviso has been recognized down to the 
present day—notably in the case of the clergy of 
the Church of England officiating in the Channel 
Islands. 

We shall now address ourselves toa series of quota- 
tions of a more general nature, but all tending to show 
the trend of opinion among the great divines of the 
Church of England from the Reformation downward 
upon the general subject of the necessity of Episcopal 
ordination. 


gI 


Apostolic Succession 


Opinions of the Reformers and Others 


That the general opinion of the Reformers was ad- 
verse to the view of the necessity of Episcopal gov- 
ernment and ordination is admitted even by those 
who are firm believers in the necessity of the Apos- 
tolic Succession. ‘‘The whole history of the times, 
the lives of Parker and Jewell and their contempo- 
raries and immediate successors, and the nature of 
their relations with the leading men of the Reformed 
Churches on the Continent, serve to show that while 
some of them valued Episcopacy highly as the best 
authenticated and most convenient form of Church 
government, and others looked upon it as little better 
than a necessary evil, all alike viewed it as a matter 
of government and discipline only. They do not ap- 
pear to have troubled themselves with the considera- 
tion of whether they had the succession as a matter 
of fact, but simply gave it up as a matter of doctrine. 
Mr. Keble somewhat naively remarks in regard to 
these writers, ‘it is enough with them, to show that 
the government by Archbishops and Bishops is an- 
cient and allowable; they never venture to urge its 
exclusive claim or to connect the succession with the 
validity of the Holy Sacraments, and yet it is obvious 
that such a course of argument alone (supposing it 
borne out by facts) could meet all the exigencies of 
the case,’ ’’ (“Prim. Ei.,”’, p. 41): Se vtnersame 


6A fuller quotation of the above passage to which our author 
refers, reads as follows:—“ Now since Episcopal Succession 
had been so carefully retained in the Church of England, 


92 


The Problem of Unity 


effect, Prof. Fisher declares that ‘‘these (referring to 
the defenders of Episcopacy) including Whitgift, 
Archbishop of Canterbury, the principal opponent of 
Cartwright’s doctrines, even then were far from as- 
serting the jure divino theory, or the necessity of 
bishops, in the sense that a church cannot exist with- 
out them. They went no further than to maintain 
the antiquity and expediency of the Episcopal organ- 
ization,’’ (‘‘Hist. Christian Church,”’ p. 378). A few 
lines further on he says:—‘‘At the consecration, in 
1610, of the Scottish bishops, who had received only 
Presbyterian ordination, he (Bancroft) met a ‘scru- 
ple’ or inquiry of Bishop Andrewes, with the remark 
that ordination by Presbyters where bishops could 
not be had, was sufficient. The bishops then created 
were sent to preside over Presbyterian clergy.”’ 

It is to be noted that any supposition that the Re- 
formers did not actually recognize the Presbyterian 
ordination of these men, but considered their subse- 
quent lawful consecration to the bishopric by duly or- 
dained bishops of the Church of England, as in itself 
covering all defects, inasmuch as the order of a Bish- 
op includes the lower orders of Presbyter and Deacon, 
will not here fit the facts, Bancroft himself declaring 
that ‘‘ordination by presbyters where bishops could 


: it might have been expected that the defenders of Eng- 
lish Hierarchy against the first Puritans should take the high- 


est ground. . . . It is notorious, however, that such was 
not in general the line preferred by Jewell, Whitgift, Bishop 
Hooper and others. . . . It is enough,” etc. 


93 


Apostolic Succession 


not be had was sufficient.’’ As we shall presently 
see, the language of the Reformers on the subject of 
the validity of Presbyterian ordination is too clear and 
outspoken to admit of such explanations. 

The following quotations have been gathered from 
various sources :— 

Bishop Latimer (died 1555): ‘‘One man having the 
Scripture and good reason for him, is more to be es- 
teemed himself alone, than a thousand such as are 
either gathered together, or succeeding one another,”’ 
(quoted in ‘‘Prim. Ei.,’’ p. 173). 

Bishop Hooper (died 1555): ‘‘Suchas teach the peo- 
ple to know the Church by these signs, namely, the 
traditions of men, and the succession of bishops, 
teach wrong,’ (‘‘Declaration of Christ and His 
Office.” 

Bradford (died 1555), when the Papal examiner said 
to him, ‘‘The Church hath also succession of Bish- 
ops,’’ replied: —‘‘You shall not find in all the Scrip- 
ture this your essential point, of succession of Bish- 
ops. . . The truth was not then tied to any Suc- 
cession, but the Word of God,’’ (‘‘Works,’’ p. 415). 

Archdeacon Philpot (died 1555), when the Archbish- 
op of York urged ‘‘Rome hath known succession of 
bishops which your church hath not; ergo, that is 
the Catholic Church, and yours is not, because there 
is no such succession can be proved in your church,’”’ 
replied: —‘‘I deny, my lord, that succession of bish- 
ops is an infallible point to know the Church by; for 
there may be a succession of bishops known in a 


94 


The Problem of Unity 


place, and yet there be no Church, as at Antioch and 
Jerusalem, and in other places, where the Apostles 
abode as wellas at Rome. But if you put to the suc- 
cession of bishops, succession of doctrine withal (as 
St. Augustine doth), I will grant it be a good proof 
for the Catholic Church; but a local succession is 
nothing available. . . . Although you can prove 
the succession of bishops from Peter, yet this is not 
sufficient to prove Rome the Catholic Church, unless 
you can prove the succession of Peter’s faith, where- 
upon the Catholic Church is builded, to have contin- 
ued in his successors at Rome, and at this present 
time,’’ (‘‘Examinations,’’ pp. 37, 137). In the Pre- 
face to ‘“The Confutation of Unwritten Verities’’ by 
Cranmer (died 1556), penned by a contemporary and 
prefixed to his works, we read: —‘‘Such gross igno- 
rance (I would to God it were but ignorance indeed) is 
entered into their heads, and such arrogant boldness 
possesseth their hearts, that they are bold to affirm 
no church to be the true Church of God but that 
which standeth in ordinary succession of bishops in 
such points and glorious sorts as now is seen,”’ (p. 
13) “‘If we shall allow them for the true Church of 
God that appear to be the visible and outward 
church,: consisting of the outward succession of 
bishops, then shall we make Christ, which is an 
innocent Lamb, without spot, and in whom is 
found no guile, to be the head of ungodly and 
disobedient members. For as sweet agreeth with 
sour, black with white, darkness with light, and 


95 


Apostolic Succession 


evil with good, even so this outward, seen, and vis- 
ible Church, consisting of the ordinary succession 
of bishops, agreeth with Christ,’’ (quoted in ‘‘Prim. 
Bii,”’\ pp. '57G). 

Bishop Jewell (died 1571): ‘‘God’s grace is prom- 
ised toa good mind, and to any one that feareth Him, 
not to sees and successions, (‘‘Apology’’). Again, 
““Lawful succession standeth not only in succession of 
place, but also and much rather, in doctrine and dili- 
gence,’’ (‘‘Defence of his Apology,’’ p. 201). 

Bishop Pilkington (died 1575), one of the Revisers, 
says (“‘Works,’’ p. 600):—‘‘Succession in doctrine 
makes them the sons of the prophets and apostles, and 
not sitting in the same seat nor being bishops of the 


same place. . . . There cannot be proved a suc- 
cession of their bishops in any one place of this realm 
since the apostles. . . . Sostands the succession 


of the Church not in mitres, palaces, lands, or lord- 
ship, but in teaching some religion, and sorting out 
the contrary. . . . He that does these things is 
the true successor of the apostles.”’ 

Dr. Whittaker (died 1595) in reply to Bellarmine’s 
“Disputation of Scripture’’ (p. 570) says:—‘‘Though 
we should concede the succession of that Church un- 
broken and entire, yet that succession would be a mat- 
ter of no weight, because we regard not the external 
succession of place and persons, but the internal one 
of faith and doctrine.’’ 

Dr. Fulke (died 1589): ‘‘The Scripture requireth no 
succcession of names, persons, or places, but of 


96 


The Problem of Unity 


faith and doctrine; and that we prove when we affirm 
our faith and doctrine of the Apostles. Neither had 
_ the Fathers any other meaning, in calling upon new 
upstart heresies for their succession, but by a succes- 
sion of doctrine as well as of persons,’’ (‘‘Answer to 
Stapleton,’ p. 74). Again, ‘“The same authority of 
preaching and of ministering the sacraments, of bind- 
ing and loosing, which the Apostles had, is perpetual in 
the Church in the Bishops and Elders, which are all 
successors of the Apostles,’’ (“‘Against Sanders,”’ 
p. 26). 

Archbishop Whitgift (died 1604): ‘‘The bishops of 
the realm do not (so far as I ever yet heard) nor must 
not claim for themselves any greater authority than is 
given to them by the statute of the 25th of King Hen- 
ry VIII, revived in the first year of Her Majesty’s 
reign, or by other statutes of the land, neither is it 
reasonable that they should make other claims. For 
if it had pleased Her Majesty with the wisdom of the 
realm, to have used no bishops at all, we could not 
have complained justly of any defect in our Church.”’ 
And again, ‘‘For if it had pleased Her Majesty to have 
assigned the imposition of hands to the Deans of every 
Cathedral Church or some other number of Ministers 
which in no sort were bishops, but as they be pastors, 
there had been no wrong done to their persons that 
I can conceive,’’ (quoted in ‘‘Rom. Prot. Anglic.,’’ 
from Strype’s ‘‘Life of Whitgift,’’ vol. iii, pp. 222- 
223). 

Dr. Sutcliffe (died 1629): ‘‘Stapleton asserts that 


8 97 


Apostolic Succession 


we (the Protestant Churches) are destitute of the suc- 
cession. And he thinks that we are terribly pressed 
by this argument; but without reason. For the ex- 
ternal succession, which both heretics often have and 
the orthodox have not, is of no moment. Not even 
our adversaries themselves, indeed, are certain re- 
specting their own succession. But we are certain, 
that our doctors have succeeded to the Apostles and 
Prophets and most ancient Fathers. And moreover, 
if there is any weight in external succession, they have 
succeeded to the bishops and presbyters throughout 
Germany, France, England, and other countries, and 
were ordanied by them,”’ (‘‘De Vera Eccles.,’’ pp. 
37, 38). 

Archdeacon Mason (died 1621): ‘‘That assertion of 
Stapleton’s, to wit, that ‘wheresoever the succession 
is, there is also a true Catholic Church,’ cannot be de- 
fended; but Bellarmine saith, far more truly: ‘It is 
not necessarily gathered that the Church is always 
where there is succession.’ For, besides this outward 
succession, there must be likewise the inward succes- 
sion of doctrine to make a true Church.’’ (On the 
Consecration of Bishops, etc., in ‘‘Ch. of Eng.,’’ book 
ii, ch. 1). Again, elsewhere he says :—‘‘Seeing a Priest 
is equal toa Bishop in the power of order, he hath 
equally intrinsical power to give orders,’”’ (Tract, p. 
160). 

Bishop Babington (died 1610), of the Commission 
of 1604, declares :— ‘‘They are true successors of the 
Apostles that succeed in virtue, truth, etc.” . 


98 


The Problem of Unity 


not that sit on the same stool. Faith cometh by 
hearing, saith St. Paul (not by succession) and hear- 
ing cometh (not by legacy or inheritance from bishop 
to bishop) but by the Word of God,’ (vzde ‘‘Prim. 
E1,,7’"p.. 186). 

Dr. Thomas White (died 1604), in reply to a Jesu- 
it’s objection, —‘‘The Protestant Church is not Apos- 
tolic because they cannot derive their pedigree lineal- 
ly without interruption from the Apostles, as the Ro- 
man Church can from St. Peter, but are forced to 
acknowledge some other, as Calvin, Luther, or some 
such,’’— replies: ‘‘Our answer is, that the succes- 
sion required to make a Church Apostolic, must be 
defined by the doctrine and not by the place or per- 
son. Wheresoever the true faith contained in the 
Scriptures is properly embraced, there is the whole 
and full nature of the Apostolic Church. For the ex- 
ternal succession we care not,’’ (vide ‘‘Prim. Ei.,’’ 
p. 187). 

Dean Field (died 1616): **Thus still we see that 
truth of doctrine is a necessary note whereby the 
Church must be known and discovered, and not Min- 
istry, or Succession, or anything else without it,” 
(bk. ii, chap. 30). Again, “‘It is most evident that 
that wherein a bishop excelleth a presbyter is not a dis- 
tinct power and order, but an eminence and dignity 
only, specially yielded to one above all the rest of the 
same rank for order’s sake, and to preserve the peace 
and unity of the Church. 

“If bishops become enemies to God and true relig- 


99 


Apostolic Succession 


ion, in case of such necessity, as the care and govern- 
ment of the Church is devolved to the Presbyters re- 
maining Catholic and being of a better spirit, so the 
duty of ordaining such as are to assist or succeed them 
in the Ministry pertains to them likewise,’’ (bk. iii, 
chap. 39; quoted from ‘‘Prim. Ei.,’’ p. 186). 

Finally, we particularly desire to call attention to 
the words of Archbishop Laud (died 1645), because he 
was one who can hardly be accused of being partial to 
presbyterial ordination. In fact, it is generally con- 
ceded that the exclusive view of Episcopacy that ob- 
tains so largely to-day has been due in great measure 
to his personal work and influence. We shall see that 
with all his effort to emphasize the importance of 
Episcopal ordination, he does not absolutely deny the 
validity of presbyterial ordination, or unchurch those 
bodies that believe in it. In reply to Fisher, the Jes- 
uit, he writes :—‘‘Besides for succession in general, I 
shall say this: It is a great happiness where it may 
be had visible and continued, and a great conquest 
over the mutability of this present world. But I do 
not find any one of the ancient Fathers that makes lo- 
cal, personal, visible, and continued succession a nec- 
essary sign or mark of the Church in any one place. 
y Most evident it is, that the succession which 
the Fathers meant is not tied to place or person, but 
it is tied to purity of doctrine.’’ Elsewhere he says: 
“‘T have endeavored to unite the Calvinists and Luth- 
erans; nor have I absolutely unchurched them. I say 
indeed in my book against Fisher, according to St. 


100 


The Problem of Unity 


Jerome, ‘no bishop, no church;’ and that none but a 
bishop can ordain, except in cases of inevitable ne- 
cessity; and whether that may be the case in the for- 
eign churches the world may judge.’” Wemight fur- 
ther add there is no arbiter of such judgment other 
than the individual conscience. 

We might continue to make quotations from other 
great divines, such as Calfhill, Bishop Bilson, Arch- 
bishop Bancroft, Bishop Stillingfleet, Archbishop 
Usher and others, but we think that the foregoing af- 
ford sufficient evidence of the general trend of opinion 
from the days of Henry to the Restoration. After 
that period, the more exclusive view steadily gains 
ground, although, as we have shown, it was never 
sufficiently powerful to obtain an official alteration 
of any of the established formularies of the Church or 
Acts of Parliament, and has been continually opposed 
by some of the greatest divines of the Church. 

In proof of this we submit the following quotations. 
Fisher’s ‘‘Hist. Chr. Ch.,”’ p. 379:— ‘‘Long after 
the Restoration and the great Episcopal reaction that 
attended it, even until now, like principles have been 
maintained by many divines of high distinction in the 
English Church. Archbishop Wake in 1724 wrote to 
Courayer: ‘I should be sorry to affirm that, when the 
government is not Episcopal, there is no Church nor 
any true administration of the Sacraments;’ and in 
1719, he wrote to Le Clerc, concerning the continen- 
tal Protestant Churches: ‘Far be it from me to have 
such an iron heart, that on account of this defect’— 


Iol 


Apostolic Succession 


the absence of Episcopal government —‘I should think 
that any of them ought to be cut off from our commu- 
nion; or, with some mad writers among us’— furdosts 
inter nos scriptoribus —‘I should affirm that they have 
no true and valid Sacraments, and even that they are 
hardly to be called Christians.’ ”’ 

Dean Pearson, of Salisbury, writing in 1842, just at 
the beginning of the Oxford Movement, objects to 
“‘this assertion of the absolute necessity of the Apos- 
tolic Succession of Episcopacy to the existence of a 
Christian Church, or to the validity and efficacy of 
the Christian Sacrament; a position which, however 
countenanced by the opinions, whether of ancient or 
modern writers, and consistent as it is with the spirit 
of Romanism, I venture to affirm, without fear of suc- 
cessful contradiction, has never been assumed by the 
Church of England; which, while asserting in the pre- 
face to her offices of Consecration and Ordination, the 
apostolic origin of the third order of ministers in 
Christ’s Church, and while lamenting by her accred- 
ited writers, as an imperfection and defect, the want 
of the episcopal order in some of the Reformed 
churches on the Continent, does not excommunicate, 
or on that account refuse to acknowledge them, while 
adhering to the orthodox faith as to all that is essen- 
tial, as true and living branches of Christ’s Universal 
Church,’’ (‘‘Prim. Ei.,’’ p. 189). 

Bishop O’Brien, of Ossory, writing also in the 
same year, says: —‘‘All our great divines, who main- 
tain the reality and advantages of a succession ‘from 


102 


The Problem of Unity 


the Apostles’ time,’ of episcopally consecrated bish- 
ops and episcopally ordained ministers to the Church, 
and who rejoice in the possession of it by our own 
Church, as a signal blessing and privilege, not only do 
not maintain that this is absolutely essential to the be- 
ing of a Church, but are at pains to make it clear that 
they do not hold that it is,’’ (‘‘Prim. Ei.,”’ p. 190). 

Finally, Archbishops Musgrave and Sumner have 
both left testimony to the same effect, the former pub- 
licly charging his clergy as follows: —‘‘You will ex- 
ceed all just bounds, if you are continually insisting 
upon the necessity of a belief in, and the certainty of, 
the apostolical succession in the bishops and presby- 
ters of our Church, as the only security for the efficacy 
of the sacraments, so that those who do not receive 
them from men so accredited, and appointed to min- 
ister, cannot partake of the promises and consolations 
of the gospel; and are, therefore, in peril of their sal- 
vation, and left to the uncovenanted mercies of God, 
which may be, in the end, no mercies at all to them. 

This would be to overstep the limits of pru- 
dence and humility, and arrogantly to set up a claim, 
which neither Scripture, nor the formularies and va- 
rious offices of the Church, nor the writings of her 
best divines, nor the common sense of mankind will 
allow. 

‘To spread abroad this notion, would be to make 
ourselves the derision of the world; it would be con- 
trary to the mind of St. Paul. . . . With respect 
to this, and to some other of the questions now 


103 


Apostolic Succession 


brought into prominence, our Reformers appear to 
have been of the same mind as a pious prelate of form- 
er times, who distinguished between what is essential 
to the being and what is essential to the well-being of 
the Church,—a wise distinction, which good sense 
and Christian charity should lead us all ever to keep 
in sight,’’ (‘‘Prim. Ei.,’’ p. 192). 


104 


IV 


THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH ON THE 
SUCCESSION 


HAvING now concluded our argument with regard 
to the Church of England, we next proceed to consid- 
er the position of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
upon the subject. Strictly speaking, there is no ne- 
cessity for a detailed investigation of the formularies 
of this Church inasmuch as she has officially declared 
in the Preface to the Prayer Book that although cir- 
cumstances of a purely local and civil nature have ne- 
cessitated certain alterations in forms and ceremonies 
(things admitted to be alterable) yet ‘‘this Church is 
far from intending to depart from the Church of Eng- 
land in any essential point of doctrine, discipline, or 
worship; or further than local circumstances require.”’ 
The matter that we are discussing, viz.,— the Apos- 
tolic Succession, is either an essential doctrine, or it 
is not. If it is not, then our contention is already 
granted, and the clergy of this communion must cease 
preaching the same asa szze gua non of the very exis- 
tence of a Church and must refrain, in consequence, 
from unchurching those denominations which happen 
to be without it. If it is, then we hold it or do not 
hold it, just in so far as the Church of England does. 
As we have just shown that the Church of England does 
not hold such a doctrine, it follows inevitably that the 


105 


Apostolic Succession 


Protestant Episcopal Church does not hold it. But 
while the evidence is conclusive, and our argument is 
in truth ended, so far as the requirements of logic are 
concerned, it is none the less advisable that we look 
somewhat further into the official declarations of this 
Church, as there are some matters that appear to re- 
quire explanation. In investigating the subject, we 
will proceed in strict accordancce with the plan al- 
ready followed in our discussion of the Church of Eng- 
land, only omitting the second heading (Acts of Parli- 
ament) which in this case is obviously inapplicable. 
The problem is properly presented, then, under two 
heads, viz.,— (a) The Articles and other formularies; 
(b) Statements of accredited writers in relation 
thereto. 


(A) THE ARTICLES AND FORMULARIES 


The Articles which this Church has appended to 
her Book of Common Prayer being the same as those 
adopted by the Church of England in all essential mat- 
ters, and those relating to the Church and Ministry 
in particular, being identical with the corresponding 
Articles of the Mother Church, it follows that the 
Protestant Episcopal Church in her Articles of Re- 
ligion has nothing whatever to say upon the subject 
of the Apostolical Succession, but on the contrary im- 
plies an opposite view of the Ministry, as was the 
case with the English Church. It is sometimes con- 
tended, however, that this Church assumes a totally 
different attitude towards the Articles than that as- 


106 


The Problem of Unity 


sumed by the Church of England. Unlike the Church 
of England in placing these Articles in her Prayer 
Book, she did not intend that either her clergy or her 
laymen should be required to believe in them. No 
clergyman is required to subscribe them here in 
America, as is the case in England, and they are 
merely to be regarded as a valuable historic document 
of the status of belief at the time of the Reformation. 
Thus Dr. McConnell tells us (‘‘Hist. Epis. Church,”’ 
Pp. 275, 276): ‘“They were ordered to be bound up 
with the Prayer Book in all future editions. No for- 
mal subscription to them was prescribed. There they 
have stood since. What binding force upon belief 
they may carry, each decides for himself. They are 
a section of Sixteenth Century thought transferred to 
the Nineteenth. They have never exercised any ap- 
preciable influence upon the life or belief of this 
Church. Like all contemporary Confessions, they 
have largely ceased to be intelligible. They are a 
water-mark of a previous tide. The current of the 
Church has flowed on unmindful of them. The last 
revision of the Prayer Book provides for their being 
bound up next its cover; the next will probably bind 
them outside.’’ That this expresses the general opin- 
ion in regard to the Articles, we believe to be true, 
and with certain qualifications, we would readily ac- 
cept it as embodying our own. The Church has nev- 
er ordered that they be subscribed, which means that 
she has never ordered that her clergy should avow 
their individual belief in all the definitions and ex- 


107 


Apostolic Succession 


planations which they contain. In adopting them, 
she evidently regarded them as very different in im- 
portance from the articles of the Creeds, and doubt- 
less looked forward to the day when they would un- 
dergo revision. That she ever set them forth, how- 
ever, solely as an historical memento of the status of 
belief in Reformation days (it is to be noted that Dr. 
McConnell does not make this statement, and we are 
not here charging him with such a view) for that pur- 
pose, and for that purpose only, is preposterous. All 
the circumstances connected with their adoption re- 
pudiate such an hypothesis. For in the first place, 
when the subject was brought up for the first time in 
the Convention, if it had been intended to preserve 
them merely as an historical memorial, aside from all 
question of the importance or object of such an under- 
taking (something by no means clear) the proposition 
would hardly have precipitated the lengthy debate 
which followed. But in the second place, it was very 
obvious that such was not the purpose of the Conven- 
tion in that the historic XXXIX Articles was not 
the document contemplated by all the members of the 
Convention. It is quite true that the first suggestion 
regarding the subject at all, was made by Bishops 
Seabury and White, and had reference to the estab- 
lished XX XIX Articles of the Church of England. 
But that they did not intend in their communication 
to the house to suggest that the same be preserved in 
the Prayer Book as an historical memorial is quite 
evident from the fact that they suggested that the 


108 


The Problem of Unity 


Articles XXXVI and XXXVII be stricken out, and 
that the Articles as amended should be ratified by 
the Convention. Moreover, the whole debate which 
followed through several meetings of the Conven- 
tion was not as to the advisability of preserving 
the XXXIX Articles as a valuable memento of 
a past formula of Faith, but of adopting them 
as an expression of the belief of this Church, either 
in whole or in part, or even of adopting any Arti- 
cles at all. Thus, ‘‘at the special General Conven- 
tion held in Philadelphia, 1799 A.D., on Thursday, 
June 13th, the Rev. Ashbel Baldwin, from Connec- 
ticut, moved in the House of Deputies, that ‘the 
House resolve itself into a committee of the whole 
to take into consideration the propriety of fram- 
ing Articles of Religion.’ This was agreed to, and 
when the Committee rose, ‘the chairman of the com- 
mittee, Wm. Walter, D.D., of Massachusetts, report- 
ed the following resolution, viz.,— Resolved, that the 
Articles of our Faith and Religion, as founded on the 
Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, are 
sufficiently declared in our Creeds and Liturgy as set 
forth in the Book of Common Prayer established for 
the use of this Church, and that further articles do not 
appear necessary.’ This resolution was disagreed to 
by the House,’’ (‘“The Church Cyclopedia,’’ ed. by 
the Rev. A. A. Benton, M.A., Art. ‘‘Articles,’’ p. 76). 

This shows conclusively three things —(1) the Ar- 
ticles proposed for adoption were to bea further expo- 
sition of the faith of this Church; (2) that the Com- 


109 


Apostolic Succession 


mittee considered such ‘‘further Articles’ as unneces- 
sary in that the ‘‘Creeds and Liturgy as set forth in 
the Book of Common Prayer established for the use of 
this Church’. . . . ‘‘sufficiently declared’ the 
position of the Church; and (3) that the House did 
not agree with the Committee that the Creeds and 
Liturgy were so sufficient. 

Moreover, the entire proceeding annihilates the ar- 
gument that the Convention was contemplating mere- 
ly the preservation of the old XXXIX Articles as 
an historical memento. Again, on Saturday, June 
15th, the subject was resumed and ‘‘A resolution was 
proposed by Mr. Bisset,— Rev. John Bisset, of New 
York,— that the Convention now proceed to the fram- 
ing of Articles of Religion for this Church,”’ (zbzd. p. 
76). This resolution was carried, and on Tuesday, 
June 18th, ‘‘the chairman of the Committee on the 
Articles, reported seventeen articles of religion which 
were read,’’ but on account of the ‘‘advanced period’’ 
of the session and ‘‘the thinness of the Convention,”’ 
further action was postponed. 

It will thus be seen that at this session of the Con- — 
vention the XXXIX Articles were ignored, and 
seventeen Articles, decidedly different in wording, 
were proposed. It was not until the Convention of 
1801 that the matter was finally settled, and the 
adoption: of the original XXXIX Articles of the 
Church of England, with the exception of Article 
XXXVII, together with certain omissions and amend- 
ments, were finally authorized. It is obvious, there- 


110 


a i 


The Problem of Unity 


fore, from these very alterations in the original Arti- 
cles, that it was never intended merely to preserve 
them as a valuable historic record of the belief of a 
former age. It is also obvious from the whole history 
of these proceedings of the Convention that the Arti- 
cles adopted were intended officially to express the 
views of this Protestant Episcopal Church upon all 
the Theological questions alluded to therein, and in 
proof of their official and representative character as 
the duly embodied opinions of this church, officially 
set forth by her highest legislative authority, the fol- 
lowing was printed upon the title page: —“‘Articles of 
Religion; as established by the Bishops, the Clergy, 
and the Laity of the Protestant Episcopal Chureh 
in the United States of America, in Convention, on 
the Twelfth Day of September, in the Year of our 
Lord 1801.”’ 

It is to be further noted on this point that Bishop 
Perry remarks that ‘“The publication by the House of 
Deputies in 1799, of the draft of seventeen Articles 
of Religion reported by a Committee of that House, 
is styled by Bishop White as ‘an injudicious measure.’ 
It was so from the fact that it rendered this draft lia- 
ble ‘to be easily mistaken for the sense of at least one 
of the Houses of the Convention!’ Still, as the Bishop 
proceeds to state, ‘it proved beneficial in its unex- 
pected consequences,’ by showing the impossibility 
of agreement on any new draft of the Articles, and 
thus preparing the way for the formal acceptance of 
those of the Mother Church of England. Bishop 


Ii! 


Apostolic Succession 


White is careful to state, in accordance with the prin- 
ciples which governed his course with reference to the 
many ‘“vexed questions’’ arising at this period of re- 
organizing the American Church, that, with the ex- 
ception of the political portions, the XXXIX Arti- 
cles were all along ‘the acknowledged faith of the 
Church.’ Though ‘the opposite doctrine was held by 
many’ it ‘threatened unhappy consequences,’ and the 
only precedent was ‘the very exceptionable manner of 
doing business, adopted by the House of Clerical and 
Lay Deputies in the year 1789. That House, in re- 
gard to every part of the Prayer Book on which they 
acted, brought the office forward as a matter originat- 
ing with them, and not their alterations as affecting 
an office already known and of obligation. It was 
answered that this was an assumption of but one 
of the Houses of a single Convention; that the 
other House had even then adopted a contrary 
course; that the same had been done in all the preced- 
ing Conventions, and that in the only subsequent 
Convention in which there had been any alterations 
of a former standard— meaning of the Ordinal, al- 
tered in 1792 — it had been soacted on as to acknowl- 
edge the obligation of the old forms, with the excep- 
tion of the political parts until altered. This seems 
conclusive reasoning.” The Articles, to quote Bish- 
op White, ‘were therefore adopted by the two Houses 
of Convention, without their altering of even the 
obsolete diction in them; but with notices of such 
changes as change of situation had rendered neces- 


II2 


The Problem of Unity 


sary,’’’ (‘‘Handbook of the General Conventions,”’ 
Perry, pp. 98, 99). 

It is quite obvious, therefore, from these words of 
Bishop White, as well as from all the attendant cir- 
cumstances, that these Articles were all along the 
‘‘acknowledged faith of the Church,’’ and were adopt- 
ed to stand as such, and this being the case, the re- 
jection of the proposed Seventeen Articles, which con- 
tained passages advocating much more exclusive 
views becomes significant. Thus, it is noteworthy 
that among other things, the IXth Article of the pro- 
posed Seventeen Articles, which treats of the nature 
of the Church, unlike the XI Xth Article of the adopted 
standard, specifies the recognition of ‘‘the order of 
the presthood..':  ., ..:..according to Christ’s ordi- 
nance and appointment;’’ and in place of the words 
“those we ought to judge lawfully called. 
which be chosen and called to this work by men who 
have public authority given unto them in the congre- 
gation’’ of the X XIIIrd Article, is substituted in Arti- 
cle XI “‘who are ordained by Bishops of the Church.”’ 
Thus it is apparent that a view opposite to that ex- 
pressed in the XX XIX Articles was proposed, but 
rejected by the Convention, such a view, in the opin- 
ion of that body, not being a correct expression of 
the faith of the Church. 

There can be no shadow of doubt, therefore, 
that the Articles of Religion as set forth in the 
Book of Common Prayer stand to-day, as they 
have always stood, the official expression of the 


9 113 


Apostolic Succession 


teachings of this Church on all the subjects treated 
of therein. 

Why then, are the clergy not required to subscribe 
them? The answer is plain. All teachings of the 
Church are not of the same importance. The Church 
has never placed the Articles on a level with the 
Creeds, any more than she has placed the rulings and 
decisions of her own Conventions on a par with the 
rulings and decisions of the Ecumenical Councils. 
Where the Universal Church has spoken in the 
Creeds, she demands individual Jdelzef, where she 
alone has spoken in the Articles, she demands indi- 
vidual conformzty only — not individual belief. She 
recognizes perfectly that her definitions and her ex- 
planations of disputed matters—of matters upon . 
which the Church Universal has not rendered an un- 
qualified opinion —are necessarily subject to recon- 
sideration and correction, and may, and doubtless will 
be revised in time. She does not set forth her indi- 
vidual decisions, interpretations, and expositions of 
these disputed subjects as final and infallible, but she 
does set them forth as her official decisions (right or 
wrong) as far as she has been divinely enlightened to 
understand the truth, The XXXIX Articles in- 
vented by man, are certainly subject to revision by 
man. Even in the Church of England, the Articles 
were revised again and again. The present XXXIX 
Articles are only the latest and maturest (not neces- 
sarily the final) judgment of the English Church — 
but still her judgment—her official opinion. Be- 


114 


The Problem of Unity 


cause of the fallible and human nature of the Articles, 
therefore, we believe it to be a serious error to com- 
pel individual, personal subscription of belief, as the 
English Church requires, and our clergy are, there- 
fore, not compelled to do so. But while it is not re- 
quired that any minister of this Church shall person- 
ally assent to these Articles as absolutely and infalli- 
bly correct in every statement —while it is allowed 
him personally to agree or disagree with this or that 
particular clause —and while it is further his privi- 
lege, if dissatisfied with any or all of them, to urge 
upon the Convention the importance of revising them 
or abolishing them altogether, yet, until the Conven- 
tion as a Convention —the Church as a Church, does 
listen to his voice, and does so officially annul or abol- 
ish them, they are still the latest official utterance 
of this Church on the subjects of which they treat, 
and must be recognized as such. They are opinions 
only, but nevertheless, official opinions of this Church 
herself, and however you and I may disagree with 
them, yet in expressing our individual beliefs in the 
pulpit or anywhere else, we must be careful to dis- 
tinguish between what are our opinions only, and 
what are the official opinions of the Church, although 
in citing them as official declarations of this Church, 
we are further permitted to assert that they are her 
opinions only, not her final and absolute decrees. 

In short, they are the fullest and maturest expres- 
sion of her judgment upon matters recognized as de- 
batable. We say, therefore, to each individual clergy- 


115 


Apostolic Succession 


man, while you are not bound individually to believe 
in each position which the Church has taken in her 
Articles, yet that the Church has taken it, you are 
bound to admit. 

The Articles, therefore, stand in relation to doctrine 
very much as the Canons stand in relation to disci- 
pline. No one is required to believe in the justice or 
wisdom of all the Canons of the Church. Not a 
General Convention passes that some one does not 
find fault with some enactment and advocate its 
amendment or repeal, and alterations in the Digest 
are continually taking place. But while men can and 
do differ materially oftentimes with certain of these 
laws of the Church, yet no one questions the fact 
that they are, none the less, laws of the Church, and 
must be recognized and obeyed accordingly, until 
amended or repealed by the same body that adopted 
them. ‘There is at this very moment a Canon that 
is being much discussed, and will probably be consid- 
erably amended in the near future, but however much 
individual clergymen may differ with the Church’s 
present law on the subject of Marriage and Divorce, 
and wish to have it altered, until it is altered, it is 
absurd to say that it is not the official attitude of the 
Church on the subject. In precisely the same way, 
there are many persons who most emphatically disa- 
gree with certain declarations of this Protestant Epis- 
copal Church contained in her Articles, but until they 
succeed in getting the same body that adopted these 
Articles to annul or repeal them in accordance with 


116 


The Problem of Unity 


their views, it is absurd to say that the Articles as 
they stand to-day are not the official expression of the 
views of this Church upon the subjects of which they 
treat. 

We conclude, therefore, that until such action is 
taken, the official position of this Church on the sub- 
ject of the Ministry, as authoritatively set forth in her 
Articles, is, like the same position expressed in the 
Articles of the Church of England, one not only in- 
different to the theory of the Apostolic Succession, 
but distinctly adverse to such a view. We might in- 
deed cite other instances in which both the Houses 
of the General Convention have appealed to the au- 
thority of the Articles, but as the above appear to be 
amply sufficient for our purposes, and as certain other 
official utterances will come up in the course of the 
next few pages, which throw further light upon anoth- 
er point as well, we defer doing so for the present. 

With the Articles out of the question, and the pre- 
face to the Ordinal remaining the same to all intents 
and purposes as that of the Church of England, and 
with the declaration of the Prayer Book, and of the 
Convention of 1814 to the effect that this Church ‘‘is 
the same body heretofore known in these States by 
the name of ‘The Church of England;’ the change of 
name, although not of religious principle, in doctrine, 
or in worship, or in discipline’ being a matter of po- 
litical necessity alone; it would seem that we might 
be at liberty to conclude our argument, were it not 
that there is one sentence, which occurs but once only 


117 


Apostolic Succession 


in a single Office of the American Prayer Book, that 
to many persons appears to afford conclusive evidence 
that this Church teaches the doctrine of the Apostol- 
ic Succession. We refer to the Prayer in the Office 
of Institution, beginning ‘‘O Holy Jesus, who has 
purchased to Thyself an Universal Church, and hast 
promised to be with the Ministers of Apostolic Suc- 
cession to the end of the world,’’ etc. We grant very 
freely that in this instance, appearances are against 
us, and in favor of the popular view, but so also in the 
famous sentence, ‘“I say unto thee that thou art Peter, 
and upon this rock I will build My Church’’ (where 
the word ‘Peter’ means ‘a rock’) appearances are un- 
questionably against Protestantism and in favor of the 
Roman theory. Let us look below appearances. 
There is no declaration of the doctrine of the Apos- 
tolic Succession made in this sentence — no evidence 
to show that such a doctrine was intended to be un- 
derstood — and much evidence to show that it was not. 
We must again caution our readers to bear in mind 
what we said at the very beginning, and what we have 
continued to say throughout this essay. The phrase 
Apostolic Succession is a very convenient one, and 
can be made and has been made to mean a number of 
different things by different people and parties. We 
are finding fault with but one use of the phrase, 
viz.,— that which is now the generally accepted use — 
the one that is nearly always understood. It isa par- 
ticular understanding of the phrase that we are attack- 
ing, and which we say this Church has never sanc- 


118 


The Problem of Unity 


tioned. The question is not what do we, but what 
did the Convention that adopted this prayer, under- 
stand by this phrase? We maintain that there were 
at the time of the adoption of this Office other interpre- 
tations of the phrase ‘‘Apostolic Succession’’ very 
commonly understood, which now, alas, have well nigh 
been lost sight of in the rapid growth of exclusive 
churchmanship within the past century (particularly 
since the beginning of the Oxford Movement) and 
that the prayer in question was not opposed by those 
who had set themselves on record as against the nar- 
rower and now generally accepted view (as for example 
Bishop White) only because the phrase was harmless, 
and was in fact commonly used to express a broader 
fact that all believed in. Every student of our Amer- 
ican Church history knows that at the time of the in- 
troduction of this Office the Low Church party, if not 
actually dominant, was none the less exceedingly 
strong — every such churchman knows likewise that 
the prejudice against Connecticut churchmanship 
came very near being a serious barrier to the union 
of the Episcopal Church in the United States, and 
that only the good sense and forbearance of Bishops 
Seabury and White, who were ready to sacrifice ev- 
ery thing short of principle itself for the unity of the 
Church, finally won the day. We know that there 
was hardly a suggestion offered by the Seabury school 
regarding a more extreme standard of churchmanship 
than was then generally prevalent throughout the 
country, that if not actually defeated, was not, at 


119 


Apostolic Succession 


least, strongly debated in Convention, and yet here if 
we regard this phrase as expressing the popular, mod- 
ern view of Apostolic Succession, we are expected to 
believe that men like White and Smith and Wharton 
not only accepted this Office of Institution with its 
obnoxious doctrine, but accepted it without a mur- 
mur of protest, so that except for a few alterations of 
a trivial nature, the Office proposed in 1804 was adop- 
ted with little opposition at the succeeding Conven- 
tion of 1808. It is quite true that there was consid- 
erable opposition to the observance of the Office even 
at that time — so much so that from being obligatory 
at first upon the entire Church, its use has now become 
optional, but the objections proffered do not appear to 
have been founded upon any doctrinal point involved 
in the Office itself. It is worthy of note, however, 
that the Office of Institution is the only Office in the 
entire Prayer Book that by Canon of the General Con- 
vention (vzde Canon X XIX of Con. 1808) is to be re- 
cognized as each Diocese sees fit, and hence it is very 
questionable if any doctrinal points asserted or im- 
plied therein, can be cited as an authoritative state- 
ment or explanation of the position of this Protestant 
Episcopal Church. This in itself, therefore, would 
make the authoritative teaching of the prayer in ques- 
tion debatable in any case, were it necessary for us to 
investigate the matter along these lines. But it is 
not necessary. It is sufficient for us to observe that 
the prayer itself only refers to ‘“‘the Ministers of 
Apostolical Succession’ and does not attempt to de- 


120 


The Problem of Unity 


fine who are to be regarded as such, and as it wasa 
commonly received opinion at that time, an opinion 
inherited from the Reformers themselves, who freely 
asserted that Presbyters were equally with Bishops, 
successors of the Apostles, and as they furthermore 
commonly used the phrase with reference to all min- 
isters who, aside from the question of Episcopal ordi- 
nation, were successors to the true faith and practice 
of the Apostles, (as numbers of the foregoing quota- 
tions we have cited absolutely show) and as it is 
again further known that Bishop White and other of 
the framers of the Prayer Book likewise used the 
phrase in this sense, it is obviously an unwarranted 
assumption that would contend that the present gen- 
erally accepted sense of the phrase is the only one ap- 
plicable in the present instance. To come down to 
the meat of the whole matter, there are hardly any 
persons of any denomination that would dispute the 
fact that the ministers of their own respective church- 
es are successors to the Apostles. All of us believe in 
Apostolic Succession in some sense. The question is, 
what sense? The Presbyterian believes quite as firm- 
ly as the strictest ‘‘catholic’’ churchman in an Apos- 
tolic Succession, for he contends that Elders, or Pres- 
byters, or Bishops were the one and the only order of 
ministers that the Apostles appointed, that the Apos- 
tles themselves, according to their own assertions 
were really presbyters (e. g. ‘“The elders which are 
among you I exhort, who am also an elder,’’ etc., 
I Peter v: 1) though from their peculiar position, 


121 


Apostolic Succession 


necessarily chief presbyters, i. e., Presiding Elders, 
and that to the elders in general was consigned the 
power of ordaining other elders, and that this power 
has been historically transmitted down to the present 
day — to their own ministers as well as to others — at 
times, by general Presbyterial ordination, but for the 
most part by ordination performed by the Presiding 
Elders alone—that is, by what is commonly called 
Episcopal ordination. It is quite true he does not lay 
any particular stress upon the historical succession 
(though admitting it to bea fact, in this sense) but 
prefers rather to maintain with the Anglican Reform- 
ers, that mere external succession is nothing, if it be 
not accompanied by doctrinal succession, declaring 
that it was this kind of succession alone that the 
Fathers regarded as essential. Now whatever may 
be the general understanding of the phrase to-day, it 
is practically certain that such was the understanding 
of it by the Reformers, and that in consequence it 
was the Anglican view of Apostolic Succession (i. e,, 
doctrinal Succession) as opposed to the Roman view, 
that was understood by the majority of the members 
of the Convention that adopted this service of Insti- 
tution —the now popular Roman view not having 
gained general recognition in this Church until after 
the Oxford Movement in 1833. It is this that ex- 
plains the silence of Bishop White and others (who 
had already given abundant evidence of their opposi- 
tion to the Roman view) when the office in question 
was submitted to the Convention. There was not a 


122 


The Problem of Unity 


man in the Convention that did not uphold the truth 
of an Apostolic Succession, but it was the Apostolic 
Succession of the Fathers and of the Anglican Re- 
formers, and not that of the Roman Church, that the 
vast majority of the members believed in, and which 
the Convention ratified. 

In proof of our contention that such was the under- 
standing of the Reformers and of the English Church 
generally when defending the phrase, we submit a 
few quotations, some of which we have cited else- 
where. ‘‘The true visible Church is named Apostol- 
ical,’’ declares Bishop Francis White, of Ely (died 
1624) “‘not because of local and personal succession 
of bishops, (only or principally), but because it retain- 
eth the faith and doctrine of the Apostles. Personal 
and local succession only, and in itself, maketh not 
the Church Apostolical.’’ Dr. Thomas White, Pre- 
bendery of St. Paul’s, in reply to the usual charge of 

the Jesuits says: —‘‘Our answer is, that the Succes- 
' sion required to make a Church Apostolical, must be 
defined by the doctrine, and not by the place or per- 
son. Wheresoever the true faith contained in the 
Scripture is properly embraced, there is the whole and 
full nature of the Apostolic Church. For the external 
succession we care not.’’ Bishop Davenant says: — 
‘All boast about local succession is empty, unless a 
succession of true doctrine be also proved.’’ Again, 
“‘They are the successors of the Apostles,’’ declares 
Bishop Babington, ‘‘that succeed in virtue, holiness, 
truth, etc. . . . not that sit on the same stool.’’ 


123 


Apostolic Succession 


Archdeacon Mason (died 1621) declares: — ‘‘So 
Gregory Nazianzen, having said ‘that Athanasius 
succeeded St. Mark in godliness,’ addeth, that ‘this 
succession in godliness is properly to be accounted 
succession; for he that holdeth the same doctrine is 
also partaker of the same throne; but he that is 
against the doctrine must be reported an adversary, 
even while he sitteth on the throne, for the latter hath 
the name of Succession, but the former hath the thing 
itself, and the truth.’ Therefore you must prove 
your Succession in doctrine,’’ etc. (“On Consecra- 
tion of Bishops in Church of England,’’ Bk. II, Ch. 
1, pp. 41-43.) 

Dr. Fulke declares (‘‘Answer to Stapleton,’’ p. 74): - 
—‘‘The Scripture requireth no succession of names, 
persons, or places, but of faith and doctrine; and that 
we prove when we affirm our faith and doctrine by the 
doctrine of the Apostles. Neither had the Fathers 
any other meaning, in calling upon new upstart here- — 
sies for their succession, but by a succession of doc- 
trine as well as of persons.’’ Elsewhere, ( ‘‘Against 
Sanders,’’ p. 26), he says: —‘‘The same authority of 
preaching and ministering the Sacraments, of bind- 
ing and loosing, which the Apostles had, is perpetual 
in the Church, zz the Bishop and Elders, which are 
all Successors of the Apostles.’’ 

And so we might quote on indefinitely, so univer- 
sally was this the meaning of the phrase when used by 
Church ‘of England clergy, during the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries. That it was again the common 


124 


The Problem of Unity 


interpretation of the phrase by all Anglicans in the 
eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries is 
likewise evident from the writings of churchmen of 
this period. Thus Archbishop Sumner says: —‘‘To 
‘preach the Word, to be instant in season and out of 
season; to testify, both publicly and from house to 
house, repentance towards God and faith towards our 
Lord Jesus Christ,’— this is to be a Successor to the 
Apostles.’’ So also we read from a work entitled ‘‘Es- 
says on the Church,’’ bya Layman. (Seeley & Burn- 
side, London, 1840, quoted in *‘Prim. Ei.’’ p. 217). 
‘Many firm supporters of an unbroken Apostoli- 
cal Succession are also staunch maintainers of the Pres- 
byterian scheme of government. They tell us that 
the Apostles constituted the Christian Church, or- 
daining Elders (or Presbyters) in every place, and 
that each local Church was governed by these Elders 
or Presbyters. The existence in some cases of an 
overseer, or delegate of an Apostle, as in the cases of 
Timothy and Titus, they do not admit to establish a 
general rule. But still, while they adhere to Presby- 
terianism, they maintain, as firmly as the highest 
Episcopalian, the necessity of a commission handed 
down in regular and unbroken Succession from the 
Apostles, to enable any man lawfully to exercise the 
ministerial office. Zhe number, then, of those that 
contend for the Succession, 1s much larger than those 
who consider that such Succession can only exist in the 
line of the Episcopacy.’’ The Author then goes on to 
show at length that such was the idea of the Apostolic 


125 


Apostolic Succession 


Succession entertained generally by the Reformers 
and later divines —‘‘that zt was the opinion of Jewel, 
Hooker and Field ‘that a mere Presbyter might confer 
every order except the Episcopate;’ in other words, 
that the Apostolic Succession of the presbyters might 
be continued by presbyters, the Episcopate being 
laid aside or lost.’’ It will be noticed that this 
author wrote in 1840,—subsequently to the adop- 
tion of the Office of Institution, and speaks of this 
view of the Apostolic Succession as a common one 
in his day —that ‘‘sany firm supporters (at the time 
he writes) of an unbroken Apostolic Succession ave 
also staunch maintainers of the Presbyterian scheme 
of government,’’ and that “‘the number of those who 
contend for the Succession, zs (at the present mo- 
ment) much larger than those who consider that such 
Succession can only exist in the line of Episcopacy.”’ 
When we take this explicit and unqualified statement 
into consideration, together with the number of others 
that we have already quoted —when we remember 
that the phrase adopted was ‘‘the Minzsters’’ of Apos- 
tolic Succession,’’ not #he Bzshops ;— when we further 
remember that the proposition to change the wording 
of Article XXIII, which declared those to be “‘law- 
fully called and sent’’ which were chosen and or- 
dained merely by men who had “‘public authority giv- 
en unto them in the congregation,’’ to the more exclu- 
sive wording —“‘those . . . who are ordained by 
the Bishops of the Church’’ (vzde Proposed Seven- 
teen Articles, Con. 1799) — was rejected by the Church 


126 


The Problem of Unity 


in Convention assembled — when again, it is further 
remembered that Bishop White himself, who had 
more to do with the formation of our Prayer Book 
and the organization of our Church than any other 
one man, put himself on record as believing in the 
validity of Presbyterial ordination (vzde ‘‘Case of the 
Episcopal Churches Considered’’) and asserted that 
such was “‘the course taken by the Church of Eng- 
land’’ (‘‘Memoir of Bp. White,’’ pp. 86, 87) and when 
finally we recollect that this broader view of Apostol- 
ic Succession was unquestionably entertained by many 
others prominent in these first Conventions of the 
Church,— that Dr. Wharton (who was said to be ‘‘the 
most distinguished scholar of the Committee on the 
Revision of the American Prayer Book’’) distinctly 
asserted that ‘‘the pretence of tracing up the Roman 
Church to the times of the Apostles, is grounded on 
mere sophistry. The Succession which Roman Cath- 
olics thus unfairly ascribe to their Church, belongs to 
every other and exclusively to none. But that portion 
of the Christian Church is surely best entitled to this 
claim, which teaches in the greatest purity the doctrine 
of the Apostles’ . . . . that according to Am- 
brose, ‘“They have not the inheritance of Peter who 
have not Peter’s faith’’— and that Dr. Smith, anoth- 
er member of the same committee, entertained like 
opinions — when we remember all these things, it is 
manifestly impossible to imagine that these very men 
who adopted this phrase without question, were do- 
ing so with the clear understanding that it necessari- 


127 


Apostolic Succession 


ly implied a view of the Christian Ministry which 
they had publicly and in print repudiated. The truth 
of the matter is that an exclusive churchmanship has 
grown up with such rapidity within the past few 
years, and so many expositions of a particular view of 
Apostolic Succession have flooded the theological 
press, that the vast majority of people have long ago 
forgotten, if indeed they have ever known, that other 
interpretations were common a century ago, and that 
only in 1840, while the present view was beginning 
to gain recognition as a result of the Oxford Move- 
ment, the number of those who contended for the 
older, broader Reformation view was much the larger 
of the two. We say that it was the Oxford Move- 
ment, beginning for all practical purposes in 1833, 
but not gaining momentum till some years later, that 
was the real source and mother of the present wide 
spread interpretation of the phrase among members 
of the Anglicancommunion. The author from whom 
we have quoted, living in 1840, writes, evidently under 
the impression that this new, but at that time not 
generally acknowledged view, is beginning to assert 
itself and must be condemned. 

The utmost that can be asserted, therefore, in view 
of all these facts, amounts simply to this:— The 
English Church has nowhere in any of her Articles 
or formularies officially recognized or set forth any 
doctrine of Apostolic Succession, while the Protestant 
Episcopal Church has only in a semi-official manner 
recognized that view of the Succession that was com- 


128 


ea 


; 


The Problem of Unity 


mon among the Reformers — which view is utterly at 
variance with the one in question. While we are not 
disposed to admit, therefore, because of the peculiar 
nature of the service in which it occurs, that this 
Church has ever done more than admit the phrase in 
a semi-official manner, yet if the point be insisted up- 
on, we shall not dispute it, as the sense in which the 
Conventions of 1804 and 1808 used the phrase, and 
allowed it in the service, was unquestionably that 
sense in which the Reformers used it, together with 
the vast majority of the English divines of that peri- 
od, and not in the modern popular acceptation of it. 
In short, there is no question whatever that the Re- 
formers did recognize an Apostolic Succession in 
their Ministry —there is no question whatever that 
they claimed to have such Succession and always 
maintained that claim against the attacks of the Ro- 
manists—there is no question whatever but that 
they claimed their Succession to be the same as that 
which was maintained and believed in by the Fathers, 
and openly appealed to the writings of the Fathers 
to justify their assertions— but there is likewise no 
question whatever that the Succession which they up- 
held and believed in as essential was a Succession of 
faith and doctrine, not of place and position, and that 
the latter view maintained by the Romanists, and now 
held by so many in our Church to-day, was the very 
kind of Succession which they repudiated. Of course 
it is not intended here to assert that they did not in 
some instances claim a Succession of place and posi- 


10 129 


Apostolic Succession 


tion as well, but only that they never in any case laid 
stress upon such a Succession as important. The 
Succession of place and position might be true or un- 
true, it made no difference, for the Succession essen - 
tial to the existence of a Church, was the Succession 
which the Fathers, they claimed, always insisted up- 
on—the Succession of faith and doctrine, not of 
place and position. 

It was such a Succession, therefore, that the Con- 
ventions of 1804 and 1808 assented to when they ad- 
mitted the Office of Induction or Institution to a 
place in the Prayer Book. In short, it was a view 
fully in harmony with the Articles which they had 
officially and simultaneously set forth as the authori- 
tative formulary of the Church’s teaching — fully in 
harmony with their official recognition in the Preface 
to the Prayer Book of all the non-episcopal bodies as 
“‘churches’’— in short, a view fully in harmony with 
all the doctrinal teachings of the Church of England, 
as well as of their own —and not that other and later 
view which is directly opposed to the official utter- 
ances of both communions and which in order to ap- 
pear justifiable and consistent, must explain away the 
Preface to the Ordinal, and must attempt to under- 
mine the authority of the Articles, and insist that 
they were never intended to be an authoritative de- 
claration of the doctrinal views of the Church. 

(B) STATEMENTS OF ACCREDITED WRITERS 


The position of Bishop White on the legitimacy 
of Presbyterial ordination, and his public advocacy of 


130 


The Problem of Unity 


the same, when the prospect of receiving the Episco- 
pate from England appeared well nigh hopeless, be- 
cause of the political difficulties arising at the close of 
the Revolution, is so well known that we need not go 
into any great detail inthe matter. ‘‘The Case of 
the Episcopal Churches in the United States Consid- 
ered’’ is the title of the pamphlet in which his views 
were set forth at length. That the criticisms which 
this work called forth from the Seabury churchmen’ 
did not in any way convince him of error in his posi- 
tion is apparent from the following note ‘‘added, with 
the date of 21st of December 1830, to the letter of 
Bishop Hobart giving an account of the incidents of 
his early life.’’ Referring to the pamphlet in ques- 
tion (viz., ‘Case of Epis. Ch. Considered’’) he says :— 
“In agreement with the sentiments expressed in that 
pamphlet, I am still of opinion, that in an exigency in 
which a duly authorized Ministry cannot be obtained, 
the paramount duty of preaching the Gospel, and the 
worshipping of God on the terms of the Christian Cov- 
enant, should go on, in the best manner which cir- 
cumstances permit. In regard to the Episcopacy, I 
think that it should be sustained, as the government 
of the Church from the time of the Apostles, duz 
without criminating the ministry of other Churches; 


7 These criticisms will be found in acopy of the original let- 
ter sent to Dr. White by the clergy of Connecticut in Beards- 
ley’s ‘‘Life and Correspondence of Bp. Seabury,” p. 98. From 
these criticisms alone it will be abundantly evident that Bp. 
White advocated and justified Presbyterial Ordination under 
the circunstances. 


131 


Apostolic Succession 


as ts the course taken by the Church of England (Wiil- 
son’s ‘‘Memoir of Bp. White,’ pp. 86, 87.) 

That the sentiments regarding Episcopacy expres- 
sed in the above named pamphlet were opposed by an 
evident minority only, and were not in conflict with 
the general views of churchmen either in the United 
States or in England, is apparent from the fact that 
it no way told against Dr. White in his influence 
with his brother churchmen, or in his subsequent ele- 
vation to the Episcopate by the approbation of prac- _ 
tically the entire American Church. His biographer 
continues: —‘‘Before his visit to England for conse- 
cration, he knew that his pamphlet had been in the 
hands of the Archbishop of York, a predecessor of 
the prelate who assisted at his consecration. It had 
been enclosed also to Mr. Adams, the American Min- 
ister, when the address of the Convention of 1785 to 
the Archbishops and Bishops of England, was official- 
ly sent to him, and was delivered by him to the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, Dr. Moore. The latter did not 
express any dissatisfaction with the pamphlet, or with 
the Author on its account; nor has any other prelate, 
so far as known. After the publication of it, a copy 
was sent to Dr. (afterwards Bishop) Provoost, at Dr. 
White’s desire, by Mr. Duane, then in Congress. 
This produceda letter from that gentleman to Mr. 
Duane, approbatory of the pamphlet, and mentioning 
some facts which the author thought much to the 
purpose of the main object of it,’’ (p. 87). 

These facts are important as they bear witness to 


132 


The Problem of Unity 


two things. First of all, they show plainly that the 
views advocated in this pamphlet were not regarded 
as peculiar either in England or in America; that they 
met with no expressions of disapproval from the high- 
est officials of the Church of England — the Archbish- 
ops and Bishops—and this in spite of the fact that 
Dr. White urged in his pamphlet that his position 
was the position of the Church of England; and sec- 
ondly, the very reception that was given the pam- 
phlet, considered in connection with the fact that 
there were many obstacles from the English point of 
view, both of a political and an ecclesiastical nature, 
to the consecration of Dr. White, proves our conten- 
tion that the changes in the Preface to the Ordinal, 
as well as the Act of the Parliament of 1662, were 
never intended as an official denial of the validity of 
non-episcopal ordination, but were adopted as meas- 
ures of expediency altogether for the protection of the 
Episcopal form of government and organization of the 
Church of England. The request of the American 
Churchmen for the Episcopate was by no means read- 
ily acceded to on the part of the people of England. 
There were too many prejudices, as well as apparent- 
ly reasonable obstacles to be overcome, and it was 
this very hopelessness of the situation that induced 
Seabury, even after he had been in England a year, 
to give up the attempt and to go to Scotland for con- 
secration. It is true that by the time White and 
Provoost were elected some of these difficulties were 
removed, but even then it was by no means an easy 


133 


Apostolic Succession 


matter to convince the Archbishops and Bishops of 
England of the advisability of such a course. They 
urged all manner of objections, even after the oath of 
allegiance to the Crown ( a supposed objection) had 
been finally disposed of. It was against all precedent 
to consecrate a Bishop who was not to be received as 
a Lord and supported at the nation’s expense — there 
was something extremely grotesque in having a Bish- 
op for ‘‘the plantations.’’ But over and above all 
these traditional prejudices and civil impediments 
there were ecclesiastical difficulties of a serious type. 
This same Dr. White had been instrumental in draw- 
ing up the ‘‘proposed’’ book of Common Prayer, and 
in that book were liturgical alterations so menacing 
in their opinion to the essential principles and faith 
of the Church of England that they courteously, but 
firmly demanded a revision of certain parts of it be- 
fore they committed themselves. All these doctrinal 
questions were duly weighed and considered, remem- 
ber, yet while the said pamphlet defending the legiti- 
macy of Presbyterial ordination and written by this 
same Dr. White was also duly forwarded to their 
lordships for inspection, it was the doctrinal teaching 
of the new Prayer Book that was called in question, 
not the doctrinal teaching of the pamphlet. If the 
Prayer Book had not been revised, the request for the 
Episcopate would, in all probability have been refus- 
ed, and if Dr. White himself had not personally con- 
sented to admit these changes, the already reluctant 
Bishops would have in all probability declined to con- 


134 


The Problem of Unity 


secrate him, but as he had freely assented to these al- 
terations, there were no objections to him on that or 
any other score, as the views expressed in the pam- 
phlet called for no criticism whatever. Here then we 
have unquestionable evidence that a man professing 
openly to believe in the validity of Presbyterial ordi-. 
nation, was, without protest on this point, duly con- 
secrated bishop at the hands of the two Archbishops 
of England, Moore and Markham, assisted by Bishops 
Moss and Hinchcliffe, in spite of the fact that a sup- 
posed law of the Church required belief in Episcopal 
ordination as an essentza/ doctrine (one in fact neces- 
sary to the very dezmg of a Church) and that the ser- 
vice of Consecration itself required that the Consecra- 
tors should examine the candidate thoroughly as to his 
soundness in fazth and doctrine;—in spite of the 
fact that the Archbishop sitting in his chair dd say 
to the candidate:—‘‘Brother, forasmuch as the Holy 
Scripture and the Ancient Canons command that we 
should not be hasty in laying on hands, and admitting 
any person to Government in the Church of Christ, 
which He hath purchased with no less price than the 
effusion of His own blood; before I admit you to this 
Administration, I will examine you in certain Arti- 
cles, to the end that the Congregation present may 
have a trial, and bear witness, how you be minded to 
behave yourself in the Church of God;’’ —in spite of 
the fact that the said Archbishop in presuance of these 
words did further ask the following direct questions: 
—‘‘Are you persuaded that you be truly called to this 


135 


Apostolic Succession 


Ministration, according to the will of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, and the order of this realm?’’—and again, 
‘Are you ready, with all faithful diligence, to banish 
and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine con- 
trary to God’s Word; and both privately and openly 
to call upon and encourage others to the same?’’—in 
spite of the fact that to both these questions the can- 
didate gave his unqualified assent in the prescribed 
words of the Consecration Service — knowing, and his 
consecrators knowing, full well that he did not be- 
lieve in the supposed essential doctrine of the exclu- 
sive validity of Episcopal ordination, but on the con- 
trary had both publicly and to them expressed his be- 
lief in what we are now told is an “‘erroneous and 
strange doctrine contrary to God’s Word.’’ Say 
what we will of the matter, one thing stands out as 
absolutely certain from these facts, viz., —the Arch- 
bishops .and Bishop of England who officiated at this 
ceremony did not regard the belief of the candidate 
in the validity of Presbyterial ordination a matter of 
false doctrine, or as a tenet contradicting any essential 
principle or teaching of the Church of England, and 
this alone shatters forever the contention that the 
theory of the Apostolic Succession as commonly un- 
derstood and received to-day was ever understood in 
their day to be an official teaching of the Church of 
England. 

But we must return to the evidence of other accred- 
ited writers of the Protestant Episcopal Church. We 
have shown that Bishop Provoost was of a like mind 


136 


The Problem of Unity 


in this matter as he wrote a letter of approbation in 
regard to Bishop White’s pamphlet, adding yet fur- 
ther arguments. We have also quoted elsewhere the 
words of Dr. Wharton, one of the revisers of our 
Prayer Book, and we might further allude to Dr. 
Smith of the same Committee, as well as to Bishops 
Meade of Virginia, Lee of Delaware, Lee of Iowa, 
and others. Bishop Hopkins of Vermont, for example, 
for many years the Presiding Bishop of this Church, 
is very pronounced in his testimony. He says, in 
his “‘Reply to Milner,’’ Vol. II, p. 3:—‘‘Dr. Milner 
asserts that the Church of England unchurches all 
other Protestant Communions which are without the 
Apostolical Succession of bishops. Whereas, on the 
contrary, not only does Hooker, whom he quotes on 
the previous page, but all the Reformers, together 
with Jewell, Andrew, Usher, Bramhall, and in a word, 
the whole of our standard divines, agree in maintain- 
ing that Episcopacy is not necessary to the dezmg, but 
only to the well-being of the Church; and hence they 
grant the names of Churches to all denominations of 
Christians who hold ¢he fundamental doctrines of the 
Gospel, notwithstanding the imperfection and irregu- 
larity of their Ministry. . . . This allegation of 
Dr. Milner, therefore, is founded on anything but 
truth. And it is not easy to believe that he was ig- 
norant of his error, because the contrary is apparent 
in the Thirty-nine Articles of our Church, and in the 
whole strain of her acts and history.’’ So also, com- 
ing down to the present time and well within the at- 


137 


Apostolic Succession 


mosphere of the Oxford Movement, we find the names 
of a number of persons prominent in the Church who 
have not forgotten the principles of the Reformation, 
and who stoutly maintain that the present view of the 
Apostolic Succession is one that has never been offi- 
cially recognized either by the Church of England or 
our own. Bishop Brooks of Massachusetts, as is well 
known, could never be induced to assent to such a 
theory, and Dean Hodges of the Episcopal Theologi- 
cal School of Cambridge, Mass., has made such em- 
phatic denial of its official character that we cannot 
refrain from citing his remarks. ‘“‘It might have 
been asserted in our formularies that our way is the 
only way. Some teachers in the Church hold that 
the Ministry is not an institution but a Succession; 
that is, that the Church is like a close corporation 
which depends for its existence upon an unbroken 
continuity. A violation of the rules governing the 
appointment of men into this corporation would inval- 
idate their standing. Thus, if ordination by a bish- 
op were the ancient and regular method of appoint- 
ment of the officers of an ecclesaistical corporation, 
then a failure in that respect would make a man no 
officer at all. In order to be a valid minister one 
must be commissioned by a bishop whose authority 
can be traced back step by step to the day when 
twelve disciples became twelve Apostles. Concerning 
this theory of the Ministry, however, the Episcopal 
Church is stlent. The various religious denomina- 
tions of the country are dignified in the Preface to 


138 


The Problem of Unity 


the Prayer Book by the name of ‘Churches.’ It is 
indeed affirmed in the Preface to the Ordinal that in 
‘this Church’ none shall minister unless he has had 
Episcopal ordination. But nothing is affirmed or de- 
nied as to Ministries which from our point of view 
are zrregular. 
“"No; the Episcopal Church, in organization as in 
doctrine, keeps wisely clear of theories and is bless- 
_ edly content with facts. The Bishops at Chicago and 
at Lambeth spoke of the ‘historic episcopate.’ That 
phrase has room enough in it for all varieties of opin- 
ion. It is the assertion of a fact. There is such a 
form of ecclesiastical government, which exists to-day, 
and has existed from the beginning of the Christian 
Church, as the historic episcopate. There is an in- 
stitutional zeory about it, which they may hold who 
will. There is alsoa Successional ¢keory about it, 
which they may hold who will. Each of these theo- 
ries can quote texts out of the Bible and out of the 
Prayer Book. Sut nezther the doctrine of Apostolic 
Evolution nor the doctrine of Apostolic Succession ts set 
forth by authority. The Church, instead of asserting 
that our way is either the best way or the only way, 
is content to affirm the simple fact, easily tested by 
history, that our way is the old way,’’ (“‘The Epis. 
Church,”’ pp. 34, 35). 
These words of Dean Hodges, in our opinion, afford 
a clear and true epitome of the entire matter. The 
doctrine of Apostolic Succession has never been offi- 
cially set forth either by the Church of England or by 


139 


Apostolic Succession 


ourown. The “‘historic episcopate’’ is another mat- 
ter altogether. That the Church has officially recog- 
nized this fact there can be no doubt, and it is one 
that no churchman can or would dispute. But the 
very fact that it was belief in the Historic Episco- 
pate, and not in the Apostolic Succession that the 
Bishops at Chicago and at Lambeth officially called 
upon Christians of all denominations to recognize is 
in itself conclusive evidence that the former and not 
the latter is the thing that both the Church of Eng- 
land and this Protestant Episcopal Church deem im- 
portant. If the present view of Apostolic Succession 
were a doctrine of either body, and one that was 
deemed essential to the very being of a Church, then 
the Bishops of the Chicago-Lambeth Conference, by 
omitting it in the Quadrilateral, have surrendered a 
fundamental principle of the faith, and the famous 
formula along with other blunders of the past, should 
either be quickly rectified, or else buried in oblivion. 


~— 140 


V 
CONCLUSION 


IN CLOSING our argument, we must again reiterate 
what we have already affirmed more than once, that 
it is not our intention to inveigh against Episcopacy 
or Episcopal Government. Belief in the Episcopate 
may be, and we hold that it is, a very important mat- 
ter, even though there be no exclusive virtue in Epis- 
copacy itself. It is to-day, and has always been, if not 
from the very days of the Apostles, at least froma 
very short period subsequent thereto, the form of ec- 
clesiastical government observed by a large majority 
of Christian people, and if Christian unity of organi- 
zation is at all desirable, it appears well nigh hopeless 
to expect it to be brought about upon any other basis. 
Certainly, if three fourths of Christendom to-day ad- 
here to this form of Church government, and if a large 
majority practically from the beginning of the 
Church’s existence have adhered to it, certainly it 
would appear very strange and unreasonable to expect 
that such an overwhelming proportion should yield 
their wishes and opinions to so small a minority. 
But on the other hand, we must remember that we 
are, in a sense, more or less responsible for the oppo- 
sition of such a minority. For just so long as we in- 
sist upon making Episcopacy an absolute essential to 
the being of a Church — just so long as we maintain 
that it is wudentably a Divine rather than a human 
institution, incapable of being abolished by any mor- 


141 


‘Apostolic Succession 


tal authority — just so long do we make its acceptance 
by non-episcopal bodies a matter of the surrender of 
a moral principle — just so long do we compel them in 
accepting it to surrender their own sincere and con- 
scientious convictions. No wonder that under such 
conditions they refuse to listen tous. When we our- 
selves are broad enough, catholic enough, to admit 
that the theory of the Divine right of Episcopacy is a 
theory only —when we are willing to own, as we must, 
that while fitting in very well with historical facts, it 
can never be absolutely demonstrated — when we fur- 
ther are willing to recognize the fact that the Reform- 
ers did not believe in such a theory themselves, and 
that the Church, in spite of all the influences brought 
to bear upon her, has carefully refrained from official- 
ly promulgating such a doctrine—when, in other 
words, we cease to unchurch our Protestant brethren 
by insisting upon a principle logically indefensible 
and never officially set forth—we will then be ina 
position to expect some concessions upon their part, 
and—we venture the further prediction—we shall 
then begin to hear some solid discussion, and see 
some valid signs of the approaching union of Christen- 
dom. 

We say we must be broad enough to recognize that 
after all is said and done, this view of the Episcopate 
as a Divine and therefore essential institution, must 
be accepted at best, if accepted at all, merely asa 
plausible theory. Jt can never be demonstrated as an 
incontestable fact, and just as long as such is the case, 


142 


The Problem of Unity 


tt can never be demanded of any Christian body as an 
absolute essential to the existence of a Church. It ap- 
pears to be true indeed, that although Bishops and 
Elders were at the beginning one and the self-same or- 
der, and besides this order the Apostles appointed but 
one other, that of Deacons, — yet the Apostles them- 
selves constituted the third and highest order. It may 
be also true, that the Apostles zztended to perpetuate 
this third or Apostolic Order, and to constitute it the 
one and exclusive channel through which the entire 
Ministry of the Church were to be ordained — but be- 
cause after historic facts agree quite well with this 
view in the main—-what man is prepared to swear 
that such was and could only be the intention of the 
Apostles, or further swear, upon the hypothesis that 
it was their intention, that they did this because of a 
solemn command of Christ Himself (recorded no 
where) which they were not at liberty to disobey, 
and did not rather, on the other hand, adopt it mere- 
ly as an expedient and useful arrangement? No man 
can absolutely and unqualifiedly commit himself to 
such a theory as the only possible view of the case, 
for there are too many other hypotheses that are also 
plausible. Moreover, whatever position we may take 
upon the actual practice of the Church in Alexandria, 
and however we may explain the words of Jerome, 
Eutychius, Severus and others upon the subject of 
Presbyterial ordination — it still remains a matter of 
great uncertainty at best, and no man can be so sure 
of his interpretation, however well it may appear to 


143 


Apostolic Succession 


fit, that he can undertake to swear that such ordina- 
tion never has been, and because of the Divine decree 
(assumed again) never can be recognized of the 
Church or of God. And so, too, as long as the origin 
of Episcopacy remains obscure —as long as it remains 
a question whether it were an Apostolic Institution, or 
an historic development, so long will there be uncer- 
tainty after all is said and done, of an unbroken tac- 
tual Succession through the Episcopate alone. It 
would be as rash to swear to it as a fact as it would 
be todeny it. It is perfectly possible — it may be 
probable but it can ever be certain. Yet if the vali- 
dity of the Christian Ministry — if the validity of the 
Sacraments ‘‘generally necessary to salvation’’— if the 
validity of the Church herself depends upon such an 
unbroken tactual succession — zt must be certain. It 
this thing is to be regarded as a szme gua non, think 
what a slender thread salvation rests upon! Think of 
the number of ‘‘ifs’’ and assumptions that must firs} 
be made before one can take this position! Is it any 
wonder that the Church has refrained from commit- 
ting herself to sucha theory? It is said that the 
Fathers in several instances give us an unbroken line 
of Bishops extending from the days of the Apostles to 
their own. We are told that Linus succeeded Peter, 
that Clement succeeded Linus, that Anacletus suc- 
ceeded Clement, and so on, but who is to tell us zm 
what sense Eusebius, Irenaeus or Turtullian used the 
word ‘‘succeeded’”’ in recording the fact? Historians 
likewise tell us that Edward succeeded Henry, Mary 


144 


The Problem of Unity 


succeeded Edward, Elizabeth succeeded Mary on the 
throne of England; so also has there been a succes- 
sion of Presidents in the United States from George 
Washington to Theodore Roosevelt. What has such 
an assertion to do with a theory that each sovereign 
or president, or some ruler of equal rank, crowned or 
inaugurated their successors in office ?— in short, what 
has the mere assertion of the fact of such succession 
to do with defining the mode of it? Granting that 
there has been an unbroken Succession of Bishops in 
the Roman See from the days of the Apostle down- 
ward — granting that Linus succeeded Peter, that Cle- 
ment succeeded Linus, that Anacletus succeeded Cle- 
ment, the assertion of this fact does not prove that 
any one of these Bishops ordained his successor, or 
that any one of them was ordained by another Bishop, 
and not rather elevated to his position by his fellow 
Presbyters, any more than the fact that Leo XIII suc- 
ceeded Pius IX and Pius X succeeded Leo XIII 
proves that any one of these Popes ordained his suc- 
cessor, or that any one of them was placed in office by 
another Pope, and was not rather (as we know to be 
the case) elevated to his position by his fellow Cardi- 
nals. In other words, the mere succession of names 
in these long lists gives no clue whatever to the 
manner in which these persons were individually in- 
stalled in office, and hence is of no value whatever in 
supporting a theory whose essence is Epzscopal rather 
than Presbyterial ordination or elevation. Moreover, 
it may be remarked in passing that even the reliabil- 


II 145 


Apostolic Succession 


ity of the lists themselves is open to dispute, as they 
are not always in agreement. 

And so, too, to revert once more to the New Testa- 
ment narrative, who can say with infallible assurance 
that the Apostles themselves were, in relation to the 
Elders whom they ordained, not so much Bishops as 
Presiding Elders, with whom these very Elders join- 
ed in the laying on of hands? It is well known that 
the Apostle Paul tells the supposed Apostle, i. e., 
Bishop Timothy, to stir up the gift that is in him by 
the laying on of his (i. e., Paul’s) hands, but that Paul 
did not alone lay hands upon him is evidenced in an- 
other passage where we are told that the gift was be- 
stowed through the laying on of the hands of the 
Presbytery. To avoid the inevitable conclusion that 
here is an instance of Presbyters at least joining with 
the Bishops (i. e., Apostles) in the consecration of a 
Bishop, it has been suggested that the Presbytery 
here referred to is the college of the Apostles them- 
selves, it being pointed out that the Apostles else- 
where speak of themselves at times as Presbyters or 
Elders. But if we assume this hypothesis to be true, 
it suggests too much. For if the Apostles ordained 
Elders, and yet at the same time declared themselves 
to be Elders, the most natural conclusion is that they 
regarded those whom they ordained as of the same 
rank with themselves — they being merely Presiding 
or Directing Elders because of their unique position 
as the first Elders instructed and sent forth of Christ 
to ordain others like themselves, and so necessarily to 


146 


The Problem of Unity 


direct and superintend. Nor, if this be so, is it the 
least surprising that they expected these brother El- 
ders after them to exercise a like superintendence and 
instruction over their fellow, though newly ordained, 
Elders, and yet again like them (the Apostles) when 
ordaining others, to have their fellow Elders unite 
with them in the laying on of hands. That the Pres- 
byters in our own Church to this day unite with the 
Bishop in the laying on of hands whenever a brother 
Elder is ordained is proof sufficient that we believe 
that the Elders in the Primitive Church did so unite 
with the Apostles at the ordination of an Elder — and 
if the Apostles called themselves Elders, and St. Paul 
distinctly asserts that Elders joined with him in 
laying hands on Timothy when the latter was ordain- 
ed to the office of Apostle or Bishop, what warrant 
have we for insisting that these Elders were not the 
same Elders as those who assisted the Apostles in or- 
daining other Elders? If there is any evidence at all, 
it is in favor of this view, particularly as inI Peterv: 
I, it is practically certain that the Elders with whom 
St. Peter is identifying himself are not his brother 
Apostles, but those who through the Apostles have 
been ordained Elders, and thus the testimony of the 
New Testament becomes absolutely one with the tes- 
timony of Jerome, Eutychius and others respecting 
the method of ordaining Bishops at Alexandria, and 
if so, it appears that the more exclusive custom of the 
Presiding Elders of different cities meeting together 
and consecrating other Presiding Elders without the 


147 


Apostolic Succession 


co-operation of the Elders, was a subsequent develop- 
ment altogether. But, whatever be the truth of the 
matter, we know that the Elders at least united with 
the Apostles or Bishops in ancient times to ordain 
other Elders, and the custom still obtains to-day in 
this Church, and he must be bold indeed who is pre- 
pared to stake his salvation upon the further alleged 
fact that no Presbyter or Elder ever united with the 
Apostles in consecrating another Apostle or Bishop, 
or who, in view of the obscurity of the whole matter 
in the New Testament, would positively maintain that 
Bishops alone have the authority of God to ordain, 
and that Presbyters can lay claim to no such divine 
prerogative. 

But it is not here our purpose to enter into a discus- 
sion of these matters, or to defend either view as final, 
and we allude to the question merely ina general way 
to emphasize the fact that the whole subject is too ob- 
scure to admit of that absolute certitude necessary to 
an essential doctrine of the Church. Whether right 
or wrong in our solution of the question, we maintain 
that there is not sufficient data at hand to demonstrate 
the truth or falsity of either side, nor if there was, 
and we could prove with mathematical exactness that 
Bishops were consecrated to their office by the Apos- 
tles alone and exclusively — the Elders assisting them 
only in the ordination of other Elders — even then we 
could not define with certainty the limits of the Pres- 
byterate’s power validly to ordain other Presbyters 
without the co-operation of the Episcopate — to say 


148 


The Problem of Unity 


nothing of the still deeper uncertainty lying beyond 
all this again, as to whether the entire arrangement 
adopted by the Apostles was not after all prompted by 
a human and temporal expediency rather than by an 
explicit command of Christ. 

There is not one line of evidence to be found any- 
where in the New Testament that affords clear and 
incontrovertible evidence that our Lord commanded 
that the Church’s Ministry should be threefold and 
that the function of perpetuating the same should be 
confined to its highest order. All such arguments are 
based upon a series of more or less questionable as- 
sumptions. It is only clear that our Lord did com- 
mission zwo classes of Ministers — the Apostles and 
the Seventy, but without laying any stress upon this 
particular number of their continuation, and what be- 
came of the Seventy in the subsequent Apostolic ar- 
rangement is still a matter of speculation. 

That the oft-quoted passage of Matt. xxviii: 16, 
20, ““Go ye thereforeandteach . . . andlo,Iam 
with you alway, even unto the end of the world,’’ con- 
tains any specific and exclusive promise to the Apos- 
tles and their successors as an individual order of Min- 
isters, is a baseless assumption which Dean Alford 
long ago showed to have no support in the language 
of the text, nor if it could be proved to be correct, 
would it any way decide the vexed question as to who 
these successors were—the Bishops alone, or the entire 
Presbyterate, seeing that the Apostles were, according 
to their own statements, Presbyters themselves. 


149 


Apostolic Succession 


The utmost that can be said is that we have our 
Lord’s express declaration that He came not te de- 
stroy, but to fulfill the ancient Jewish Covenant, and 
it isa logical inference that since He desired the 
same general pattern to be observed, except where 
His own Messianic work had necessarily introduced 
changes, that He expected the same threefold order 
that obtained in the Jewish Ministry to be perpetuat- 
ed in His own. In our opinion, this expressed desire 
of our Lord to stand by the old Mosaic pattern 
wherever it was possible, together with the actual 
fact of the appearance of such a threefold order imme- 
diately upon the death of the Apostles, is the strong- 
est ground which we possess for believing that this 
particular form of organization was divinely intend- 
ed. But even after the point is granted, there is no 
analogy to show that the function of perpetuating this 
Ministry was also divinely intended to be restricted 
to the Episcopate, or that the last was in any sense a 
distinct order from the Presbyterate, but, on the con- 
trary, there is much to confirm the theory before men- 
tioned that Apostles and Bishops were in truth Pre- 
siding Elders only — differing in office but not in or- 
der from their fellow Elders. 

But, after all, when the last word has been! said, 
when all the possibilities have been ventilated, and all 
the pros and cons discussed, when we have finally set- 
tled it to our satisfaction just what particular order 
and arrangement our Lord had in view, and the Apos- 
tles intended to carry out — how will the non-observ- 


150 


The Problem of Unity 


ance of this arrangement by any particular body of 
Christians justify us in asserting that they are not 
within the fold of Christ? The zmportance of any 
matter is one thing, its zecess¢ty quite another. Even 
could it be proved (which as we have just said cannot 
be done) that our Lord did intend fashioning His 
Church after our present outward and visible pattern, 
who is to say that each and every particular of this 
Divine pattern is of the same importance — or that the 
feature in question is one so weighty as to be deemed 
essential to the very bezng of a Church — yea, to the 
very existence of a Christian man? In view of the 
number of assumptions that must successively be made 
before we are in a position to assume that the doctrine 
of the Apostolic Succession is absolutely necessary to 
the existence of the Church and even of truly Christ- 
ian men, we believe that it is a far more grievous and 
dangerous thing in ws to denounce our fellow Christ- 
ians who are without the Episcopate as outside of the 
Church or Body of Christ itself, than it is in them, 
under the same circumstances to denounce the Epis- 
copate as a human rather than a Divine institution, 
unnecessary to the perpetuation of the Ministry and 
the inner life of the Church. Of the two, we would 
rather be with those whose errors are intellectual rather 
than spiritual; in short, we would rather find our- 
selves intellectually in error regarding the truth of 
Christ’s teaching upon certain points, while still re- 
maining true to His Spirit of love and toleration, than 
to find ourselves intellectually correct, but spiritually 


151 


Apostolic Succession 


at fault. It is a very serious thing for us to condemn 
and excommunicate those of our brethren who happen 
to differ with us merely in their uxzderstanding of the 
Word of God, while remaining absolutely one with us 
in heart and devotion to His cause, and yet for us to 
declare openly to the world that we and we alone who 
happen to have the Episcopate are the legitimate 
branches of the Vine, and that all other bodies of 
Christians, however pure in heart and godly in life, are 
without the pale of the Catholic Church —a position 
which we shall assume when we adopt the name of the 
American Catholic Church —all such procedures mean 
nothing more or less than this. Let the Lord of the 
Vine do the cutting off of the branches. After all, it 
is indeed quite true that only He can do it. It is in- 
deed quite true that our noisy anathemas can do our 
fellow creatures little harm. It is not they, but we 
who must consider the consequences, for often those 
very deeds which are impotent and harmless enough 
in their effects upon others, are fraught with potent 
and eternal consequences to ourselves. Let us be- 
ware, therefore, lest by our own attitude a worse thing 
happen unto us. Let us beware lest we, professing 
in this Twentieth Century a degree of breadth and 
toleration unknown to former ages, do wake to find 
ourselves, despite our protestions of horror at the mere 
mention of the Inquisition or the Interdict, to be none 
the less the children of them that killed the prophets. 
One of the hardest lessons that Christianity has had 
to learn is centered in the great truth that forms and 


152 


The Problem of Unity 


systems, as well of government as of worship, impor- 
tant though they be (and God forbid the thought that 
they are not important) are none the less zmportant, 
not essential. Christ believed in forms and ordi- 
nances indeed, but beyond all, in the weighiter mat- 
ters of the Law — righteousness, mercy, truth. The 
one is essential, the other only zmportant; the one is 
vital to salvation itself, the other is but a useful means 
or auxiliary thereto. To the men who would have re- 
versed this order, however, to the Pharisees of old 
who emphasized the letter at the expense of the spir- 
it, who imagined themselves true Israelites simply 
because of the seed of Abraham after the flesh, rather 
than after the spirit — to those that believed that the 
promise was to the circumcision of the flesh, rather 
than to the circumcision of the heart — to these men 
having all the formal requirements of the outward 
Covenant, but lacking the inward and spiritual — to 
these our Lord declares in no uncertain tones that the 
Kingdom shall be taken from them altogether, and 
given to men, who, although they are utterly and al- 
together without the visible ordinances, are none the 
less, because of the Spirit, the true heirs of the prom- 
ise — the true successors of Moses — the true branches 
of the Church of Jehovah and of Christ. We say, let 
us beware lest we to-day, in vainly boasting of a mere 
outward succession from the Apostles, are not, like 
the Jews of old, losing the true inward succession that 
is alone of permanent value, and while so boasting of 
this formal lineage as the only infallible sign of the 


153 


Apostolic Succession 


Church of Christ on earth, and condemning all those 
about us who have it not as cut off from the Body of 
Christ — outside the true seed of the spiritual Abra- 
ham — are in truth condemning ourselves, not realiz- 
ing that God’s promises to-day, even as God’s promis- 
es of old, are not made to the fleshly or physical suc- 
cession as such, but to the spiritual — not to the flesh- 
ly succession of the laying on of hands but to the 
spiritual succession of Faith, Doctrine and Charity 
in the Spirit of Christ, which is in truth the Life, 
and the only Life of the Body of Christ —i.e. the only 
Life of the Church. That this was unquestionably the 
view of the Reformers, and that no other succession 
than the succession of faith and sound doctrine has 
ever been recognized by this Church as essential, has 
been the object of these pages to prove. 

We cannot do better than conclude our argument 
on this point with the words of one of the most cele- 
brated divines of the Church of England. In his re- 
ply to Harding, the Romanist, the learned Bishop 
Jewell has this to say:—“‘If it were certain that the 
religion and truth of God passeth ever more orderly 
by succession, and none otherwise, then were succes- 
sion whereof he hath told us so long a tale, a very 
good, substantial argument of the truth. But Christ 
saith, by order of succession, ‘The Scribes and Phari- 
sees sit in Moses’ Chair.’ Annas and Caiaphas, 
touching succession, were as well bishops as Aaron 
and Eliezer. Of succession, St. Paul saith unto the 
faithful at Ephesus: ‘I know that after my departure 


154 


The Problem of Unity 


hence, ravening wolves shall succeed me. And out 
of yourselves there shall (by succession) spring up 
men speaking perversely.” Therefore St. Hierome 
saith: ‘They be not always the children of holy men 
that (by succession) have the place of holy men.’ As 
the Scribes and Pharisees succeeded Moses, perverting 
and breaking the laws of Moses, even so do the Bish- 
ops of Rome this day succeed Christ, perverting and 
breaking the laws of Christ. . . . Such affiance. 
some time had the Scribes and Pharisees in their suc- 
cession. Therefore they said: ‘We are the children 
of Abraham ;’ unto us hath God given His promises: 
‘Art Thou greater than our father Abraham?’ As 
for Christ, ‘we know not from whence He came,’ or 
what can He show for His succession. And when 
Christ began to reform their abuses and errors, they 
said unto Him, ‘By what power doest Thou these 
things, and who gave Thee this authority?’ Where 
is Thy Succession? Thus to maintain themselves in 
credit, for that they had continuance and succession 
from Aaron and sat in Moses’ Chair, they kept Christ 
quite out of possession, and said unto Him, even as 
Mr. Harding saith now unto us: ‘Whoever taught 
us these things before thee? What ordinary succes- 
sion and vocation had thou? What Bishop admitted 
thee? Who confirmed thee? Who allowed thee? 
All other things failing, they must hold only by 
succession; and only because they sit in Moses’ Chair 
they must claim the possession of the whole. 
‘This is the right and virtue of their succession. 


155 


Apostolic Succession 


. . We neither have bishops without Church or 
Ghmet without bishops. Neither doth the Church 
of England this day depend of them whom you often 
call apostates as if our Church were no Church with- 
out them. . . . They are for a great part learned 
and grave and godly men, and are ashamed to see your 
follies. Notwithstanding, if there were not one, 
neither of them nor of us left alive, yet would not 
therefore the whole Church of England flee to Lo- 
raine. . . . Whosoever isa member of Christ’s 
Body, whosoever is a child of the Church, whosoever 
is baptized in Christ and beareth His Name, is fully 
invested with their priesthood, and therefore may 
justly be called a priest. And wheresoever there be 
three such together, as Tertullian saith, ‘yea, though 
they be only laymen, yet have they a Church!’ 
God’s Name be blessed forever! We want neither 
Church nor priesthood, nor any kind of Sacrifice that 
Christ hath left unto His faithful. Faith cometh 
(not by succession, but) by hearing; and hearing 
cometh (not by legacy or inheritance from bishop to 
bishop, but) of the Word of God. ‘Succession is the 
chief way for any Christian man to avoid Antichrist.’ 
I grant you, Jf you mean the Succession of doctrine. 
It is not sufficient to claim Succession of place, it be- 
‘hoveth us rather to have regard to Succession of doc- 
trine.’’ (Works, III, 320, 338, 348). 


Having now pointed out what, in our opinion, are 
the most serious obstacles in the way of any immedi- 


156 


The Problem of Unity 


ate steps towards the attainment of Church unity, and 
having proven that the popular theories relating to the 
Church and the Episcopate are utterly indefensible up- 
on the hypothesis that they are in any sense the offi- 
cial teachings of this church, it follows that there is 
but one course left open to us. It is our parts and 
duties, as we love the Church Catholic before any one 
human branch or division of it, and hold the welfare 
of the entire Body of Christ to be dearer and more 
sacred to us than all mere denominational ends and 
interests, that we should in the manliness of true 
Christian strength, have the courage to abandon 
these popular, but narrow and unchristian views, 
which are, in truth, no part of the teachings of this 
church, but are merely the unofficial theories of cer- 
tain of her members, and openly and bravely proffer 
to the world a platform of unity, which in its true 
interpretation is broad and tolerant enough to admit 
into one communion and fellowship at least a very 
large, if not the greater part of the Christian world. 
We say a very large, if not the greater part, for it 
may be true, indeed, that even with a correct under- 
standing of its last and most disputed clause, there 
will be yet certain branches of the Christian Church 
which will not consider the formula sufficiently ade- 
quate for their needs. This, of course, can hardly 
be obviated, and indeed it would be unreasonable to 
expect the unity of entire Christendom as the result 
of this or any other single effort. 

But however inadequate the formula may be as re- 


157 


Apostolic Succession 


spects the perfect realization of our hopes, the fact 
that it is logically fitted to accomplish so much in the 
right direction, proves it to be invaluable, and this 
alone should urge upon all who can accept its princi- 
ples, the moral necessity of making use of it as far as 
possible. , 

We venture to assert that when once it is clearly 
understood that this formula proposes to recognize 
the Catholic membership of all baptized persons, to- 
gether with the validity of the ministries of all non- 
episcopal bodies, neither condemning their official 
acts nor discriminating in any way against them or 
their respective denominations, and that the proposi- 
tion for the adoption of the historic Episcopate is 
made solely in the interests of expediency —the Epis- 
copal form of government having been for fifteen hun- 
dred years the practically universal rule, and being at 
this present the rule of well nigh three-fourths of the 
entire Church Catholic, thus making it beyond ques- 
tion the only form of government whose adoption 
could reasonably be expected — we venture to assert, 
we say, that when this is the clear and unequivocal 
understanding of the matter, the prospect of unity 
will be a thousand-fold increased. 

The Scriptures as containing all things necessary to 
salvation, and being the ultimate rule of faith; the 
Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds —the first as the bap- 
tismal symbol, the second as a sufficient statement 
of the Faith; the two Sacraments ordained by Christ 
Himself, and administered with the unfailing use of 


158 


The Problem of Unity 


His words—these things can meet with but little 
real opposition from the vast majority of Christian 
people. It is only the 4th Article that can in any 
way call forth serious objections, and with a corrected 
view of its supposed meaning and intent, these too 
must fail. 

For after all, what are the facts in the case? What 
would be the general attitude of the main bodies of 
the Christian world towards such a platform? It is 
quite true that so far as Rome is concerned our pro- 
position cannot hope for success. But what proposi- 
tion can? Rome will not indeed consent to the re- 
cognition of the Ministries of non-episcopal bodies, 
but neither will she allow the validity of Anglican or- 
ders, and furthermore, by her insistence upon the re- 
cognition of the supremacy of the Pope, she has im- 
posed another condition that no church in Christen- 
dom will allow. So far, therefore, as Rome is con- 
cerned, neither the Lambeth Articles, nor any other 
platform that could possibly be devised by any other 
Christian body can, under existing conditions, hope 
for success. Objections, therefore, to our particular 
proposition merely because of the attitude of Rome, 
are out of order. Our object here is not to defend 
this or any other proposition as a perfect basis of uni- 
versal union, for, in our view of it, neither the Lam- 
beth Articles nor any other platform as yet proposed 
or possible of serious consideration, can under exist- 
ing conditions, meet with the full assent of Christen- 
dom. Our object is only to hit upon a platform, con- 


159 


Apostolic Succession 


sistent with our own essential beliefs and principles, 
which will simultaneously, and at this present time, 
appeal to the largest possible number of Christians, 
and we believe that the position here advocated is of 
such a nature. For even if we should maintain the 
necessity of the prevailing theory of Apostolic Suc- 
cession as the Catholic party would advocate, nothing 
would be gained, and much would be lost. _Protest- 
antism would, of course, be lost to us; Rome would 
still continue indifferent, and the only possible gain 
would be fellowship with the Eastern Church. More- 
over, on the basis of such an agreement, there would 
be no further prospect, even in the remote future, of 
winning either Rome or the Protestant Churches. 
On the other hand, if the Lambeth platform, interpre- 
ted as to its 4th Article as herein indicated, and 
shown to be the only interpretation consistent with 
the official position of this Church, were urged, not 
only would there be hope of reunion with the Protest- 
ant bodies, but there would z/tzmately be hope of un- 
ion with the Eastern Church. For whatever attitude 
the Greek Church might at present assume towards 
the admission of the validity of non-episcopal orders, 
when once Protestantism and Anglicanism were unit- 
ed upon this basis, and Episcopal government a fact, 
the whole question would in a few generations cease 
to be a question, and there would, therefore, be no 
excuse for further organic separation. It would then 
result that practically the entire Church, exclusive of 
Rome, would be reunited. While, therefore, it is 


160 


The Problem of Unity 


true that absolute unity cannot be hoped for upon the 
basis of this proposition, it is likewise true that it 
cannot be hoped for upon the basis of any other, and 
as it is further true that this proposition offers a reas- 
onable hope of reunion with a very considerable part 
of Christendom in the relatively near future (a part, 
moreover, which from a racial, political and social as 
well as religious standpoint is much nearer to us than 
any other) and in the more remote future with practi- 
cally all the remaining portion, with the one exception 
of Rome, it seems only right that we should take ad- 
vantage of it. From a purely. utilitarian point of 
view, therefore, such a proposition would appear most 
advisable, and it is difficult to see how we can afford 
to shut our eyes to its importance. But this is by 
no means all. Were it merely a matter of utility, the 
writer would gladly have spared himself the writing 
of these pages. Unfortunately it is a far more ser- 
ious matter that the Church is called upon to consid- 
er, for whatever we may think of the problem from 
the standpoint of mere expediency— whatever we may 
think of the utility or practicability of such a meas- 
ure, there is a moral side of the question that reveals 
our duty all too clearly, and whose imperative de- 
mands will admit of no hesitancy or debate whatever. 
We most solemnly assert that if the Church as a 
Church (apart from the opinions of individual church- 
men) has in all her official acts and utterances ever 
stood for the recognition of the validity of non-epis- 
copal orders, then unless this Church as a Church is 


12 161 


Apostolic Succession 


ready publicly and offictally to repudiate this her his- 
toric position to the world, she is morally bound to 
stand to her professed principles, and seek for the 
unity of God’s people along those lines, and along 
those lines only, wherein her own conscience has ever 
declared to her lay the pathway of reason and of duty 
—in short she is morally bound, irrespective of any . 
present prospect of success or failure, of the practica- 
bility or non-practicability of such a measure, to be- 
gin her work for the uniting of Christendom by mak- 
ing a frank and fearless acknowledgment of the valid- 
ity of non-episcopal orders, and the corporate mem- 
bership of all baptized persons in the Mystical Body 
of Christ. Will she seize the opportunity, or will she 
not? Will she have the Christ-like courage to admit 
the error and redeem the wrong which many of her 
sincere, but all too zealous, children have committed 
in her name; or will she ina narrow, worldly spirit 
stick, reasonably or unreasonably, right or wrong, to 
the infallibility of their present attitude, regardless 
of the living witness of her own authoritative and 
historic utterances? Is her present doctrinal posi- 
tion, in other words, to be interpreted by the 
mere unofficial theories and opinions of certain 
of her members, shifting with every wind of pop- 
ular churchmanship, and so presenting no one, con- 
sistent and defensible front to the world, or is she 
to be regarded as authoritatively teaching only those 
old principles, and their inevitable corollaries, which 
she has ever officially maintained, or else such 


162 


The Problem of Unity 


new ones only (either additional or corrective) which 
she shall at this present, or any future time, see 
fit likewise officzally and authoritatively to declare? 
These are the alternatives before her. Let her 
speak. 


Note 


In continuation of the footnote on page 42, the 
reader will kindly add the following observation: 


If it should be contended that the mere faz/ure of the Articles 
to mention the doctrine of Apostolic Succession is no argument 
that the Church does not recognize such a doctrine, we reply 
that it zs none the less an argument that she does not regard it 
as an essential doctrine or one that her clergy #ust¢ subscribe. 
Lssentials of belief can never be ignored or omitted from those 
official statements of belief which the Church requires her clergy 
to subscribe. Official failure to mention a doctrine, alleged to 
be essential to the very being of a church, is in itself official af- 
firmation that such a doctrine is not essential thereto. Essen- 
tials must be positively affirmed. It is only non-essentials that 
can be ignored, and so left to speculation and debate. 


(tint 


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